Walter Cannon's Theory, Expanded
by Temptation's Girl
Summary: Edward's working the night shift, trying to gain experience before his first year of medical school. He might learn more than he expected.
1. Chapter 1

**Disclaimer: All characters, etc. are property of Stephanie Meyer.**

* * *

The Freeze Response: The ["fight or flight"] sequence, originally described by Jeffrey A. Gray, begins with what ethologists call "the freeze response" or "freezing," terms corresponding to what clinicians typically refer to as hypervigilance (being on guard, watchful, or hyper-alert). This initial freeze response is the "stop, look, and listen" response associated with fear. The survival advantage of this response is obvious. Specifically, ethological research has demonstrated that prey that remain "frozen" during a threat are more likely to avoid detection because the visual cortex and the retina of mammalian carnivores primarily detect moving objects rather than color. [1]

* * *

The parking lot was still and quiet in the warm summer night air; the only sounds were the buzzing of the streetlight and the faint sound of a siren, running to or from Harborview's ER I was certain. My future home this fall. I still couldn't believe my luck that my borderline-mediocre MCATs got me into UW's medical school, allowing me to stay in state. I could even stay in my shitty one-bedroom apartment. For most people, medical school meant picking up and moving halfway across the country. I would just have to walk to the other side of campus.

Everything came easily for me: a single child, my parents were still together and happy, I had a good set of friends in Seattle, and although I wasn't seeing anyone seriously it was easy for me to talk to women and get dates. I never had to study too hard; my 3.5 GPA was the result of my intelligence and not any hard work on my part. Medical school was the next logical step – what else was I going to do with my B.S. in biology? So like everything else in my life, my acceptance to med school fell into my lap. I was waiting for the other shoe to drop. The older I got, the more apprehensive I became, the more weary and paranoid. Something had to change; things couldn't always be this easy.

I ran my hand through my hair, an old habit, as I took the last drag from my cigarette. I was glad that my one vice had gotten me outside tonight. The warm summer breeze had finally taken off the chill; it was always freezing in the ME's office, and scrubs offered no warmth whatsoever.

I was spending my last summer of freedom before med school working as an autopsy assistant at the King County Medical Examiner's office. Adding on a couple of nightshifts working "security" at time-and-a-half every week would help offset some of my first year costs. The pay wasn't great, but I was getting what every fresh-faced medical student dreamed of – experience. I would not be one of those med students fainting at the first sight of a cadaver.

After only two months on the job I knew there were only a few things that could still turn my stomach. General hospital smells were now ambrosia in comparison to the stench that never seemed to leave the ME's office. I could differentiate between a general decomp and a floater with my eyes closed, based on smell alone. I was hardened; I was prepared. I dropped my cigarette butt to the sidewalk and ground it out with the toe of my sneaker, took a deep breath of the city night air, and headed back in. These extra nightshifts were much easier than I expected. My only real responsibilities were to sign in any bodies brought in between midnight and 6 a.m., or release remains to funeral homes that had to drive the out-of-town dead to funerals that were hours away. I checked toe tags, signed my name, shifted body bags around in the walk-in cooler. Most nights I spent staring at my new first year textbooks, or, more often than not, playing game after game of Minesweeper or solitaire. Charon, I was not.

Tonight I was having serious trouble not falling asleep. I had screwed myself over by working during the day, only getting a few hours of sleep in the early evening before coming back for this night shift. I was also the dumbass who scheduled myself to work the next day as well. At least I was getting practice for the long hours I knew I would have starting in the fall.

I couldn't go out to smoke again so soon after coming in, so I wandered the halls of the office, making a lopsided circle through the administrative offices, the oversized autopsy room with all of the tables shiny and clean for the next day, the long hall to the walk-in and back. I flipped my lighter open and shut, open and shut. The first few nights I was here by myself, I got a little creeped out walking by or going into the walk-in freezer by myself. It was stupid, I know. I've been elbow-deep into dead bodies during autopsies, but it was physiologically different under the harsh florescent lights of the autopsy room surrounded by my coworkers with full PPE separating me from the body.

Nights alone here were different. The dead were more mysterious lined up in body bags in the freezer. I think only the repetition of night after night here had dampened the creep factor. From the end of the hallway, over the soft tones of the classic rock station on the radio, I heard the buzz of the alarm for the bay door, startling me out of my reverie.

I wandered back over to the desk, turned off the radio, and looked at the display from the security camera. I recognized the old van and buzzed Mike in. Mike was the one guy I could depend on seeing regularly during my overnight shifts. He drove a van for Seattle PD, bringing in bodies from crime scenes. He was always cheery considering he was up at some god awful hour carting the dead around.

"Edward, my man! Good to see you here!" Mike hopped out of the driver's seat, slapped me on the back, and walked around to the back of the van.

"Hey, Mike, what's up?" I was glad for the work. It would keep me awake a little longer, although Mike always grated on my nerves. I grabbed the logbook and some gloves.

"Not much, my man! Just enjoying this fine Seattle night! You don't have too much longer here, do you? School starts in a few weeks? Must be pretty exciting, huh? Too smart for me, man! I couldn't wait to get out of school! You think after working here you might be interested in joining the docs at this old place one day?"

I nodded as I tuned Mike out and helped pull the stretcher out the back of the van. Mike asked the same damn questions almost every night, and never seemed to notice that he was carrying on a conversation by himself. I guess when you're alone every evening, it must get kind of lonely.

"What the deal with this guy?" I started unzipping the body bag, looking for personal effects and anything out of the ordinary to note in the log. He was a young guy, younger than me. College age? High school even? He had blond curly hair, was tall, thin, and very clean looking. Most of the bodies brought in from PD rarely looked this nice. It was actually refreshing, and I was overjoyed that it wasn't another decomp. With a blue button-up shirt, dark wash jeans and dark leather shoes, his looked almost too nice for a college kid. There were no noticeable wounds or marks on his body.

"Where did you guys pick him up?"

"Oh, he was lying on one of the benches in Lawton Park? Near the playground, you know? And a cop walking by noticed he wasn't breathing and called it in. Weird, cause it's too warm for hypothermia. Maybe an overdose? But hey! That's what you guys are for, right?" Mike laughed as we started wheeling him away from the truck. Mike signed the body over to me and hopped back into the driver's seat.

"See you around, man! Lemme know when your last week is; me and Eric will take you out!" Eric was the regular night security guard, and although I was flattered I didn't think I really wanted to spend a night in a bar with those two.

As I heard the creaky garage door to the bay start to close, I looked down at the body again. Unless there was obvious trauma, the newly dead don't look noticeably different from the living. Until you get to the stages of lividity, the skin color is the same, and the body temp hasn't cooled down too much. Very different from what you see on TV. This guy looked different, somehow. His skin tone was off – smooth, very pale, none of the telltale bruise-colored signs of lividity, and he was cool. Cold, actually. I wondered how long he'd been out on that park bench.

Usually when I covered nights I only needed to log bodies and put them into the cooler. Sometimes, though, when I knew I was going to stay on in the morning for my regular shift and do the autopsy, I would go ahead and do some preliminary work – check for IDs, take photos, start a chart, and mark any obvious signs of trauma on the body. I rolled the stretcher into the building and out of the garage bay and stopped in the hallway outside of the autopsy room.

I fully unzipped the body bag and pulled it back, completely exposing the body. I grabbed the digital camera off of the shelf and started taking pictures. I got the face and a long shot of the body, then started looking for any signs of trauma. There weren't any recent marks or scratches, but he had scars. Lots of scars. They were faint, pale half-moons, covering his exposed forearms where his sleeves were rolled up and on his neck, even a few on his face and hands. I didn't see them in the weaker light of the garage, but under the bright fluorescent lights in the hallway I could just make them out. They seemed off, somehow, like the rest of him. I stared for a minute, the quiet of the hallway making me wish that Mike had hung around awhile longer.

I leaned in close to his left hand, tracing with my gloved finger one scar that covered his palm. With my face so close to his hand, there was no way that I could miss the fact that his fingers twitched.

"HOLY FUCK!"

I jumped back, my lower back slamming into shelves behind me. The dropped camera clattered on the tiled floor, the back springing open and the batteries rolling under the cabinet. My hands clutched each side of the countertop, and my fingers dug painfully into the surface. I knew that if I weakened my grip at all, my body would take off, chemicals screaming, "FLIGHT! FLIGHT! FLIGHT!" coursing through my bloodstream.

My heart was pounding – tachycardia, I thought randomly. I forced myself to take slow, deep breaths. I must have imagined it, right? After a minute, when I trusted myself to not sprint off, I deliberately pulled each finger of my right hand off of the black countertop, and once my hand was free, I reached forward and gingerly placed my first and second fingers on the body's wrist. _Never use the thumb to check for a pulse; the pulse in your own thumb might mask the patient's_ - random medical knowledge free-associated in my head. I felt nothing on the cold, hard skin. I might as well have been pressing down on marble. I held my fingers there for another minute, making sure I wasn't missing anything.

There were cases, of course, where a living person was taken to a morgue or ME's office. All kinds of crazy stories circulated in the office during the day. But this guy was dead. There was no doubt about that. His chest was still, his body cold. I moved my hand to his neck – if his blood pressure was very low, I might not be able to feel a pulse in the extremities. I brushed his curly hair away from his neck before I pressed down where I guessed his carotid artery was. I had no exposure to live patients; I realized that I didn't even properly know how to take a pulse. Maybe I wasn't so prepared for medical school after all. But there was nothing, no movement, nothing tactile that would show life.

I shook my head as I let out a shaky breath. I felt stupid. Two months? Two months of spending nights here alone, surrounded by bodies, by death, and I was still getting spooked? I was an adult, a man. This was ridiculous.

I pulled the body bag back up, zipped it closed, and briskly pushed the stretcher down the rest of the hall and into the walk-in freezer. I left the body just inside the door, away from the handful of other bodies farther back in the cooler awaiting pickup. We'd do the autopsy in the morning, only a few hours away. Daytime, and fellow employees, and bright, normal routine. I just had to make it until 6 a.m.

4:58

4:59

It had been almost thirty minutes since Mike brought in the body. The adrenaline had worn off, and I was getting sleepy again, against my will. I watched the clock switch over to 5:00 a.m., glad I only had one more hour to go until the early-shift people started trickling in. I could expect Angela, sweet, dependable Angela, to get here as early as 5:40 to get an early start on set up and prep for the morning. Angela was the one actual friend I'd made here; she had finished undergrad a few years ago and was working on her R.N. part-time. I had gone out with her and her husband, Ben, the previous weekend. Angela's old college roommate had met up with us. I figured Ben and Angela were trying to set me up with her, but I didn't really mind.

_"Edward? This is Bella." I looked up from my conversation with Ben, seeing Angela's slender face hopeful and smiling as she pushed her friend forward. Bella was someone that on paper would seem completely average. The dead center of the bell curve. Medium height, medium build, brown hair, brown eyes. Her face was symmetrical and her skin clear, but her features wouldn't be categorized as beautiful. She smiled shyly and reached out her hand. I slid off my stool as I wiped my palm on my jeans, my hand wet from the condensation of my beer. As I shook her hand I noticed how pink her nails were, and her hand was soft and delicate in my larger one. _

_"Hi, Bella, nice to meet you." I smiled back, and we stood just a beat too long, smiling at each other. _

_"How do you know Angela?" Bella broke the silence as she gently pulled back her hand and reached for the back of a free barstool. _

_"We work together at the M.E.'s office. I'm starting med school in the fall, and wanted to get some practical experience." I winced internally; I usually didn't tell people right away about medical school. I thought it made me sound conceited, an asshole. I knew enough douchey pre-med students like that who I didn't want to emulate. _

_"That's cool. I could never do something like that. I'm impressed with people who can handle all of the blood and gore. I even faint at the sight of my own blood." Bella had sat on the high barstool and turned to face me. Her nose crinkled when she mentioned blood. I picked up the pitcher of beer and motioned to an empty glass. She nodded, so I started pouring her a drink. _

_"What do you do?"_

_"I'm a social worker. I work mainly with the elderly—I'm part of a team that certifies _

_nursing homes with the state, checking into accusations of abuse and mistreatment, things like that."_

_"That sounds heavy. What got you into that field?" I was surprised, for someone that appeared to have delicate sensibilities; that was some serious shit. _

_"I don't know, I guess I've always taken care of the people in my life. I've always wanted to help others." She wrinkled her nose again, looking up at me sheepishly. "That sounds really cheesy, doesn't it?"_

_I laughed. "Not really, I spent the past year writing medical school admission essays where I had to wax poetic about how much I wanted to help people and change the world. That's mild in comparison to the stuff I wrote." _

_She smiled and took a sip of her beer. Angela leaned over and started telling funny stories about her and Bella in college, and we all fell into an easy conversation. Close to last call, Bella went to the bathroom, and Angela slid over into her chair._

_"So..." She raised her eyebrows expectantly. _

_"So..." I raised mine right back, smiling._

_"Come on! What do you think? Bella's single and could definitely stand to get out more."_

_"I don't know, with me starting school in less than a month, I would be a shitty boyfriend for the next few years. School's going to be my life. She's really sweet, but I don't know if I want to subject anyone to that." For some reason I didn't want to let Angela know that I really liked Bella. I felt protective of her and my feelings. I didn't want to let Angela and Ben in on that yet. _

_"You don't have to marry her, just take her out sometime!" Angela laughed as she slid back to her own seat. _

_"Maybe..." I grinned as I saw Bella shuffle around a group of drunk guys and back to our table. Bella looked up and smiled back. I did ask for her number that night, away from Angela's prying eyes, as I walked her to her car. _

_I thought about kissing her as we stood there in the warm night, between sedans in the parking lot. I didn't want to seem too forward; I didn't want her to think I wanted to kiss her because we'd been set up, or because I'd been drinking all night. She looked up at me, her skin glowing and slightly flushed, and I settled for pushing a strand of hair behind her ear. It was soft and silky, and I swallowed roughly. _

_"I had a really good time tonight."_

_"I did too."_

_We paused for another long minute, smiling at each other, before I pushed my body off the car opposite hers, and walked off into the summer night._

I pulled out my cell phone and scrolled through my contacts until I saw her number. I would call Bella later today, maybe. My finger hovered over the send button. I'd ask Angela this morning if she knew Bella's schedule and when she might be free. I put my phone back on the table and laid my head on my left arm, eyes level with the keyboard of the computer and the telephone. I could see the security monitors farther back, slightly out of focus.

I ran scales up and down the desktop with my right hand, mentally working my way through the circle of fifths. Maybe I could take Bella to one of the student concerts in the music department at UW this fall, a good cheap date. Show her I wasn't a cocky asshole med student. I started in on some finger exercises when I thought I saw movement on one of the security monitors. I lifted my head and blinked heavily. My eyes were starting to feel scratchy from being up all night. I rolled the desk chair over the series of monitors. The second monitor, the one that was aimed down the main hallway of the building, was where I thought I saw something. Looking closely, I realized that the door to the walk-in freezer was ajar. I blinked again, shook my head. No way. This was getting ridiculous. I was sleep deprived, seeing things.

My mind started rapidly backtracking, thinking maybe I hadn't closed the heavy refrigerator door all of the way when I left the stretcher there. I felt slightly nauseated. I laughed, high pitched and sounding weak in the silence of the building. I picked up my cell phone and walked out of the office. There was nothing to fear; I was being paranoid and stupid.

Even from the other side of the hallway I could see that the door to the walk-in was ajar. I woodenly started walking the length of the hallway, ears attuned to the hum of the lights and my footsteps. Once I was within arm's length of the door, I stopped. Everything part of me was screaming to turn away, walk out of the building, leave leave leave. I couldn't though. This was my job, I was an adult, and there was nothing logically to be scared of. I opened the door the rest of way.

The stretcher in front of me was empty.

A foreign feeling permeated every inch of my body, like I was being submerged in cold water. I was always a brave kid, never afraid of scary movies or monsters under the bed. I was never scared of tests, never nervous about my future, never feared public speaking. I had never known fear in my safe, charmed life. This, this fear, this terror, was completely new. I didn't feel like my body was my own. I felt like I was watching myself from a distance; I felt disassociated from my body. I was completely frozen. I didn't even flinch when I felt a cool, firm hand on my shoulder.

My body was being turned, and my limbs were heavy and useless as I rotated around. The blond body – no, now he was a man again - was my height, and we were eye level. Standing, he looked different. His face was now animated, but still off? Somehow? He looked at me wearily, as if he was the one shocked to see me here, rather than the other way around.

"Calm down." His voice was smooth and quiet, barely above a whisper. I realized, as my mind seemed to reconnect with my body, that I was taking shallow, quick breaths (_hyperventilation, too little CO2, self-correcting if the patient faints_, and my brain was back to random medical facts). Instead of the fight-or-flight response that I had earlier in the hallway, I felt calmer, almost drugged or drunk. My mind started to feel as heavy as my limbs.

The man pushed me backwards, a hand on each shoulder. His hands felt heavy, as if they were adding to wooden feeling of my arms. My lower back hit the stretcher in the walk-in, an echo of my back hitting the countertop hours earlier. I wondered briefly if I was going to be bruised later. The man stood there, hands still on my shoulders, looking at me as he tilted his head. He looked around the room thoughtfully, and I could tell he was trying to figure something out, or decide something.

"What _are _you?" My voice was hoarse, as if I hadn't spoken in a long time. I felt like I could barely get the words out; I felt like I was underwater. Unlike the freezing cold of terror from a few minutes earlier, now I was submerged in something warm and heavy (_natural and semi-synthetic opiates - morphine, codeine, hydrocordone, oxycodone; side effects include drowsiness, constriction of pupils, depressed respirations_).

He looked back at me sharply, as if my question had answered his. He sighed and narrowed his eyes. I hadn't noticed before that his eyes were a very light, pale brown, almost the color of honey, with very large pupils (at least he wasn't under the influence of narcotics). He removed his right hand from my shoulder and reached into the front pocket of his jeans. He pulled out a cell phone and flipped it open, dialing with his thumb. The banality of his actions seemed unreal, and hysterical laughter tried to bubble up through the heavy fog in my mind. Who was he calling? Creepy dead guy hotline?

"What's my best option?" Was he talking about me? Option for what? I kept feeling like I should be afraid, like my fear was there, underneath the surface, fighting against the warm heaviness pushing down in my mind. His left hand squeezed my shoulder, and the fear dissipated, cold particles of dread being absorbed into the warmth. His left hand kept squeezing as he listened to whomever he had called.

"Seriously? Are you kidding me, Alice?" He narrowed his eyes further. "There isn't a better option?" A pause. "What are they even doing in Seattle right now? The timing could not be worse."

He paused again, looking from me to the door to the walk-in and back, as if he wanted to leave but couldn't. "Did you want me to bring him back to Carlisle? He won't be pleased, I'm sure."

"What happens if I just leave him?" Another long pause, and the man looked more and more angry. My fear started to push back up, pushing harder and harder against the thick weight in my head. I started to breathe deeper, as if I had been unintentionally holding my breath and just now remembered to breathe.

My muscles started to clench up, and I wondered if I could push past him and get through the door of the walk-in. The hand on my shoulder felt like a lead weight. I shifted my weight to my left foot, about to move, when his brown eyes found mine again. My muscles relaxed, and my mind sank back underwater, warm and numb again.

"Well, no, we wouldn't want that. Shit. Are you sure we can't wait until Carlisle gets back?" There was a pause. "I really don't want to have to do this again. I don't know how well I can anymore..." Another long pause. I could barely make out a voice on the other end of the cell phone. It sounded like a girl's voice, but I couldn't make out any of the words.

"You have too much faith in me sometimes." The man smiled tightly as he looked off into the distance. "Okay, I'll meet you in the back parking lot within the next ten minutes. See you then."

He closed the phone and looked down at it for a minute. He put it back into his pocket, then returned his right hand to my shoulder. He looked into my eyes, and his expression had changed – he looked sad, remorseful. That look was too much, pushing my fear and terror back up to the surface. I was almost vibrating in my skin, the warring emotions fighting each other.

"I'm sorry." He slid his left hand up to my neck, gently pulling it to the side. My barely contained fear exploded through the haze; my hands shot up and grabbed his wrists, trying to yank them away. My sneakers started slipping on the linoleum as I pushed back against the stretcher; I couldn't find purchase on anything. I realized that I still had my cell phone in my right hand, and I was almost crushing it between my palm and his wrist. His arms were immovable, steel against me.

He moved in closer, until we were pressed against each other. I felt trapped, like an animal. I was sweating, hyperventilating again, my heavy breaths the only sound besides the hum of the refrigerator. He tilted his head, and I felt his lips against my neck, cool against my sweaty skin. A new wave of fear swept over me, a new terror that brought tears to my eyes as my stomach clenched. He paused, and then I felt a familiar pain.

The first week on the job I had cut my left thumb with the scalpel. It was deep and ended up requiring three stitches. However, since the blade was so sharp at first I hadn't felt anything at all besides the warmth of my own blood under my glove. My neck was warm, and wet, then I felt the sharp sting. I couldn't reconcile what was going on. I wondered where the scalpel was. Then there was more of the stinging, and it was spreading, and soon it gave way to burning.

In my peripheral vision I saw blond curls; then, somehow, I was moving. I saw the flicker of the overhead florescent lights in the hallway, then the ceiling of the garage bay, but everything seemed fuzzy and far away. The pain was spreading throughout my body, and my muscles started clenching up. I was still squeezing my cell phone, and I heard it beep as I pushed a button.

The warm air of the summer night was barely perceptible and did nothing to cool the burning. Though my vision was now blurring I could see the lightening of the night sky, changing from deep, dark bluish-black to a gray haze. I could see Venus, the only star still visible in the sky. I could still hear the buzz of the overhead lights, and now bird songs in the distance joined in.

Faintly, in the distance, I could hear a siren. I heard a car pull into the parking lot as I watched the sky continue to lighten. Venus got dimmer and dimmer, and eventually winked out. I heard voices quietly talking, but I could not make out what they were saying. Then, as I was being picked up again, I heard my cell phone:

"Edward? Is that you? It's Bella. Are you there?"

[1] Bracha, H. Stefan, Ralston, Tyler C., Matsukawa, Jennifer M., Williams, Andrew E., Bracha, Adam S. Does "Fight or Flight" Need Updating? Psychosomatics 2004 45: 448-449

**Author's Note:**

**Thank you for reading! This was my first story, and the wonderful Feisty Y. Beden was totally my inspiration to write. I apologize for any inaccuracies with regards to the location, layout or shift schedule of the King County Medical Examiner's office. I have never been to Seattle and I've based this off of my own experiences working with the ME's office of my own mid-sized city. **

**Lividity, or livor mortis, is the discoloration caused by pooling of blood post-mortem. It doesn't happen right away, and can be used as an indicator for the time of death.**

**PPE is personal protective equipment - gloves, gowns, masks, etc. used to protect health care workers from bloodborne pathogens.**


	2. Chapter 2

**Disclaimer: All characters, etc. are property of Stephanie Meyer.**

**

* * *

**Myodesopsia: Deposits of various size, shape, consistency, refractive index, and motility within the eye's normally transparent vitreous humour. They may be of embryonic origin or acquired due to degenerative changes of the vitreous humour or retina. When observed subjectively, floaters are entoptic phenomena characterized by shadow-like shapes that appear singly or together with several others in one's field of vision. They may appear as spots, threads, or fragments of cobwebs, which float slowly before one's eyes. [1]

* * *

When I was seven years old, I had what my pediatrician said was the worst case of chickenpox he had ever seen. I had spots on the soles of my feet, between my fingers, in my ears, on my eyelids.

The itching was so excruciating that I could barely stand to move. I found out quickly that scratching only made things worse, so I would lie in bed with the blinds drawn, a cool, wet washcloth over my eyes, and wait. And wait. It was hard to sleep, and I longed to just pass out.

My mother, devoted to her only child, sat beside me for hours and read aloud. She went through all of the Hardy Boys books, relics from my father's childhood. I don't remember any of the plots from those books, but my mother's voice, soothing, soft and lilting would stay with me forever. I focused on her voice, fought the urge to scratch, and prayed I would fall asleep soon.

That was nothing in comparison to what I felt now.

The burning was not just on my skin, the soles of feet, my ears, my eyelids. It encompassed my soft tissue, bones, organs. My spine was ablaze, my skull being ripped apart and pieced together again and again and again.

Random thoughts floated in and out of my head. I felt sorry for anyone who had migraines, if the pain in their head was anything like this. I wondered what my mother was doing. I tried to remember if the covers of those Hardy Boys books were blue and green or blue and red. The light behind my eyelids seemed bright red, lights floating around as if I had stared into the sun. I didn't know if I was in a bright room or if this was in my head. I didn't know where I was, and after an indeterminate amount of time had passed, I didn't fully know who I was anymore.

I kept burning.

Eventually, I remembered who I was again. Odd facts about the id, ego, and superego floated through my head as I felt my consciousness return, facts learned in a psychology class that seemed far away. Lights still danced behind my eyes.

My head seemed bigger, larger than before. Spacious, lots of room to think clinically about Freud, and the burning, and worry about the light and the spots in my eyes. There were other thoughts as well, voices that didn't seem familiar to my mind. I never thought before about the tone of my inner voice, but now that there was more than one it was easy to differentiate between my voice and the other voices.

_"Pass out pass out god why can't I just pass out don't move it would hurt more to move turn down the lights oh the lights are moving don't move don't move I think I'm gonna throw up oh my stomach is burning burning burning don't move don't move fuck fuck fuck"_

That was my voice, a lovely inner monologue that started once I remembered who I was and could consciously think about the pain.

_"This was a bad idea. I don't understand why Alice said this was the best option. It doesn't make any sense. She needs to get back here soon. She shouldn't be out there alone. She didn't have time to explain on the phone, but she should have told me something. She really shouldn't be out there alone. I should have stayed behind to cover our tracks. It was my fault, although with my eyes I shouldn't be seen in public right now. What a stupid, stupid mistake. What will Carlisle say when he sees my eyes? Jesus Christ. I wonder if I hunt soon they would start to change back. I should stay, keep him calm. I wish Alice was here. I wish Carlisle was here. This is my responsibility; I need to stay."_

That was not my voice. It was a man's voice, I thought?

I felt emotionally detached as I listened. Any curiosity I may have normally had was pushed aside; all of my energy focused on the another voice, fainter, farther away?

_"We never should have come here; we should have stayed in Alaska. We'll have to leave. There's not enough room. What the hell, Jasper! If Emmett is not ready to leave in two minutes I'll have to hurt someone. Fuck."_

This was also not my voice. Despite the colorful language and apparent anger, this was a women speaking. Not speaking, though, it was different – a monologue? A train of thought?

The implications of this, of these other, foreign invaders in my head, was too frightening to contemplate. Besides, I needed to focus on the burning.

I heard steps in the distance, like someone coming down stairs. With it entered a third voice in addition to my own, but I tried to push it away. I couldn't take it; there wasn't any more room in my head, even with my expanded brain. The pain of the burning was just too much, and I couldn't concentrate.

The voices all remained in the room, and it was excruciating. It was as if the three voices were echoing, and the words and phrases were slightly different as they repeated.

"I don't know what the hell you were thinking, Jasper. We haven't even gotten settled in! We have all gotten in sticky situations with humans before, but somehow we've all managed to get out without fucking biting anyone! What the hell?"

"Please, please don't blame Jasper, Rosalie. He only did it on my insistence. I swear, it will all be alright. Edward was meant to be with us, with our family. It will all be okay. Would you feel better to know that he will be talented? It will be extremely helpful."

"No, Alice, you don't need to placate Rose. I should take the blame for this. I shouldn't have gotten caught, or let things go so far. I will take responsibility for all of this. Rosalie, maybe you are right to go back to Alaska for a while with Emmett. It's not easy to deal with a newborn, especially in the first few weeks."

"Look, Jasper, I don't want to get in the middle of this, but would you want me to stay? Could you use another pair of hands dealing with him when he wakes up?"

"Christ, Emmett, you just want to stay and play around with the new kid! You're coming with me to Alaska. You shouldn't encourage them. I don't know why you're not upset about all of this. It will completely disrupt our lives. We'll probably have to leave Washington, and we just got here!"

"Rose, I love you, and I will go with you if you want. But really, would a disruption be such a bad thing? To be honest things can get boring after awhile. Maybe some fresh blood in the family will do us all some good. Alice certainly thinks it will work out, and when has she been wrong before?"

"You know what? Do what you want. I don't care anymore. I'm leaving. And I sure as hell don't want to be here when Carlisle and Esme get home, you have fun explaining all of this to them. Come on, Emmett, if you won't mind too much being _boring_ with me in Alaska."

Then two of the voices faded away, along with fading footsteps, then another left, and only the first remained. It wasn't too bad; I could handle one. More time passed, and the light behind my eyes slowly, slowly started to dim, fade, until it was finally, blessedly dark.

The burning hadn't changed, but it seemed slightly more bearable now. It stayed dark, then slowly got light, and finally dark again. Two voices came and went, and I tried my hardest to ignore them.

When the darkness warmed to light again, the burning finally started to subside. I could now fully compartmentalize it in my head, and I tucked it away in a new corner that was not there before.

I simultaneously started taking in my surroundings and listening in earnest to the other voices. I was on a bed, I thought. The surface was soft, my head slightly elevated, and I was on my stomach. It smelled like goose down, feathers, cotton, detergent. The bed frame smelled wooden and varnished.

It was quiet, very quiet outside of the voices. No breathing, no movement. I could hear a faint breeze from outside, I could hear the quiet creaks of the building settling, the steady hum of appliances, none nearby to my room. I was upstairs, probably?

There were animal sounds outside. Near the woods? I could smell a few people in the room, although I could not hear them move or breathe. Each was perfumed, very distinctly different smells. Three, maybe? Two? I smelled different as well. No longer sweaty, no longer pungent from wearing the same scrubs for days in a row. I didn't think I had my scrubs on anymore. I was just in my boxers.

As I took all of this in I concurrently listened to the voices in my mind. One of the voices was male, the one I had heard steadily throughout the past few – what, days? weeks? hours? I had no idea how much time had passed. His voice seemed faintly familiar. He was still talking about guilt, and a girl, Alice, and other names like Rosalie and Emmett and Carlisle and Esme.

The strangest thing, I could picture in my head these people he named, as if I could see through his mind's eye. Whenever I heard "Alice" I could see a very petite girl with dark hair, back to me, facing a bed, and on that bed was a man with red hair. A young guy, about my age. Pale and unmoving. The clarity of the voice and the images strengthened and weakened, strongest on the name Alice and the scene with the girl and the guy on the bed.

The other voice was sweet, a girl's. She was excited, almost unbearably so. She was also talking about the guy on a bed, and Seattle, and the man that I saw in the ME's office, and others I didn't recognize.

She quickly skipped around, images flashing in and out of my head, barely keeping up with her fast voice. Her and someone, someone who looked almost like me, running through snowy woods together. A park, and the man with curly blond hair on a bench, and a police officer. Snow-capped mountains, and the almost-me guy dressed and laughing, eyes red. A plane landing, and a couple walking into the house, with distinct impressions about parents, and again the names Esme and Carlisle.

She talked about feeling relieved, excited, nervous, guilty. All of this though was in the background, in comparison to her louder voice, yelling.

"Wake up! Wake up, Edward! Wake up! Wake up!"

And, as if commanded, I opened my eyes.

[1]Myodesopsia. (n.d.) . (2005). Retrieved November 14 2009 medical-dictionary[.]thefreedictionary[.]com/myodesopsia

**Author's Note:**

**I have decided to expand this into a multi-chapter story, after some encouragement. I want to thank Feisty Y. Beden, who beta'd this for me, which makes me feel like one of the Cheftenstants on _Top Chef_ when they got to cook for ****Joël Robuchon, the chef of the century. Crazy!**

**Thank you for reading, I hope you enjoy it!**


	3. Chapter 3

**Disclaimer: All characters, etc. are property of Stephanie Meyer.**

**

* * *

**Umami: One of the five basic tastes sensed by specialized receptor cells present on the human tongue. The same taste is also known as xiānwèi in Chinese cooking. Umami is a Japanese word meaning "savory" or "meaty" and thus applies to the sensation of savoriness—specifically, to the detection of glutamates, which are especially common in meats, cheese and other protein-heavy foods. The action of umami receptors explains why foods treated with monosodium glutamate (MSG) often taste fuller. [1]

* * *

In retrospect, it really wasn't Jasper's fault that I had broken the bed and window frame that morning.

He had no idea what was going on, and his anxiety and tension ratcheted up and up until it overflowed and saturated the room, mixing with Alice's excitement and my crazy newborn vampire brain until I couldn't physically take it any more. I had to get out, and Alice was blocking the door.

When I had first opened my eyes it was almost too much; the room was screaming with visual information.

As I started to take it in, the girl's voice I had heard earlier stated very clearly in my head, "Carlisle has a theory about vampire sight. He thinks the ratio of rods to cones evens out, since we can take in and process more information about color and texture than a human can." I pulled my head away from the pillow and locked eyes with Alice.

We didn't move for almost twenty minutes. Her with a shit-eating grin, me with my mouth open and eyes wide. Alice had seen my gift in her visions and was ready to bombard me mentally with everything she thought I would immediately need to know about being a vampire, and a freakishly gifted one at that.

In her excitement Alice had forgotten to say anything aloud to Jasper, and the longer we remained frozen, staring at each other, the more nervous he became. When his emotions overpowered the room I bolted, and I was half a mile into the woods, still only in my boxers, when Alice and Jasper tackled me.

"I'm sorry! I'm sorry! I didn't think; I was just too excited. Look, here, I brought some clothes for you, but you know, this is okay, we need to take you hunting right away anyhow, remember what I told you about hunting? It will help a lot to calm you down." Alice veritably danced around us, as I was pinned to the ground by Jasper's lanky frame. He slowly released the pressure from my arms and got up, pulling me up with one hand.

"Calm _me_ down? Is she always like this?" I looked at Jasper, and he only rolled his eyes and gave me a small grin.

"She's not normally this bad. This is a major event for all of us, I believe." Jasper's voice was low and calm, and matched his inner voice that occupied my head space.

He gave Alice a look I couldn't quite decipher, and as I tried to listen harder to Jasper's thoughts, I thought he might have been trying to shut me out mentally. He kept picturing other people, other vampires, I realized.

"Who are they? The people? Vampires? You and Alice both keep thinking about them."

"That," Jasper said as I tried to carefully pull on the pants, "is a long story. Let's get you fed first."

I was embarrassed that Alice had to fix my fly and button up my shirt as I got dressed. She hadn't bothered to bring out shoes or socks, explaining that until I started to get my strength and speed under control, I would destroy a lot of clothes.

Once I was dressed we started to run away from the house. There were no words for it – I flew between the trees, in and out and around mossy rocks, never slipping, never a wrong step, with everything, everything – close up, midrange, the horizon - all in perfect focus. If I thought the bedroom was information overload, I was in for quite an awakening when presented with the Olympic National Forest.

While we ran, Alice and Jasper, both out loud and internally, explained in more detail what I was looking for, what to expect, how to react to our prey. I was more than a little confused and frankly disgusted. I had never hunted before, and in fact I had been a vegetarian since I was twelve.

Despite my job as an autopsy tech, this was different; four days ago the idea of butchering a piece of meat would have been revolting. Their advice to "just let instinct take over" and "let your nose guide you" was not at all helpful.

That is, until I smelled the black-tailed deer.

The burning I had pushed into a compartment into my brain (which I realized now just happened to reside in my throat) exploded bright white in my head, pushing everything else out of the way. All capacity to think honed in with laser-like precision to that one smell, that wet, warm, rich smell. I veered off to the right, knocking over a small tree, and threw my body at the deer, crushing us both to the forest floor.

My next conscious thought was a few minutes later. I looked behind me, mortified at the path of destruction in my wake. It looked like a bulldozer had plowed through the forest. A stout boulder had even been broken in half, soil was upturned, branches littered the ground, blood and fur was everywhere.

My hands started to shake. I did this? _I_ did this? The environmentalist phrase "raping the earth" floated through my mind. I realized I had been holding my breath, so I inhaled shakily. The contrasting information – the visual account of my destruction, and the smell, that wonderful, mouth-watering smell of blood, rust, salt, warmth... I couldn't process it.

Alice and Jasper walked up, unperturbed. Alice crouched down next to me, plucking a leaf from my hair.

"Don't worry. It will get easier; you won't always make such a mess. You just don't have control yet, and it will come. You just need to give it time. Be patient." Alice looked around, then back at me with a sympathetic smile.

"When I woke up, I was alone and had no memories of being human. I had no one to teach me." She patted me on the shoulder.

"I'm not trying to downplay what you're going through, but it really won't be that bad. Jasper went through this too, but with people, not animals."

I looked up at Jasper, but he was looking away, into the forest, seemingly not paying attention to our conversation. His shoulders were tense, though, and his thoughts were again more closed off than usual.

"I was a vegetarian, before. This is the first time I've eaten an animal in over ten years. Is it eat? Or drink?" I smiled weakly back at Alice.

Jasper's history put this in perspective, but I still hadn't even had time to wrap my mind fully around what had happened over the past few days. I wasn't sure how I felt about any of it – if I should be excited, mad, angry, hopeful, resentful, or all of those combined. But I was glad that I was there with Jasper and Alice. Small blessings, as my mom would say. I was feeling much calmer, and although I wasn't sure if it was Alice's kind words or Jasper's influence, I was glad for it.

"You need to hunt again." Jasper said out loud as he started picking up some of the larger branches that I had knocked over.

"No... no. I don't think so." I said, shaking my head. Although I was feeling calmer, I wanted to get out of the woods. And I certainly didn't want a repeat of the last ten minutes.

"You have to. You're still hungry." Jasper still wasn't looking at me while he said this, but his words had an air of authority.

I looked to Alice, hopeful she would disagree, but she patted me on the shoulder and said, "Jasper's right. You'll need much more blood before you'll be able to concentrate on anything else."

So we spent the rest of the afternoon hunting. Alice regained her enthusiasm and went into great detail about blood lust and the time I had lost while killing the deer. She said it would get easier, that I would be more aware and have more control, but to still always be careful when hunting, and told me sobering stories about hunting too close to hiking trails or populated areas, and unconsciously shifting from stalking animals to stalking people.

With each subsequent attack I remained calmer, more focused, less messy. I could start to keep my head while drinking. I watched Alice and Jasper, who, although they were not hungry, killed almost as much as I, demonstrating how to approach from behind, to bite only once after snapping the neck. We found only black-tail deer, but they reviewed all of the larger mammals in the park, and how when I had more control I could be more picky with my prey.

They were frightening and beautiful to watch. I was in the company of athletes, dancers, their movements alien and sensuous. I felt clumsy and inept in comparison, although I was surprised that I could run faster than either of them.

I ran too far ahead I got nervous, afraid to be alone by myself, although I was now the most dangerous predator in the forest by a long shot. I would stop and wait until I could hear them – the sounds of running first, then their minds. Alice, always smiling and happy to see me, and Jasper, face impassive and thoughts straightforward and practical. He was almost constantly thinking about his previous training of newborns, things I should know, things we should practice.

I still didn't know what to make of them. So much had happened so quickly; I was still trying to take in everything about my new body and mind and hadn't yet started to think about my new companions.

"You both keep thinking the same names over and over – Rosalie, Emmett, Esme, Carlisle? They are the rest of your family? Am I reading that right?"

We were sitting along a log in a small clearing, waiting for me to mentally prepare myself to hunt again. Well, I was sitting, and they were standing, still and unmoving. Although they had explained patiently that I had no need to sit anymore, it still freaked me out. They were so alien. I wanted to hold on to my human mannerisms, thank you very much.

"Yes, they are our family. Jasper and I had been together a few years before we finally found them. Remember how I told you that when I was changed, I lost my human memories? My visions were the one saving grace. I saw Jasper, and I saw the Cullens." As Alice talked, I could see and hear in her head more of the story, flushed out with details of Alice meeting Jasper in a diner, them moving into a house, two couples.

"Carlisle is the oldest, although Esme appears older; she was changed when she was twenty-six. He changed her, then Rosalie, then Emmett. Rosalie and Emmett are a couple as well. We've all been together over fifty years. As I mentioned earlier, we're pretty unique in that we don't drink human blood. There's only one other group, coven, like us that we are aware of, and they live in Alaska."

"Where are they? The rest of your family, I mean? You keep thinking about snow and mountains and a beach...?" I really hoped that they hadn't left because of me, because of what Jasper had done.

Although I wasn't completely comfortable with Alice and Jasper, and unsure what to make of them, I still didn't want to cause trouble. I didn't want them to have a reason to regret my being here; I didn't want them to leave me. I didn't think I could handle this on my own.

"Umm..." Alice looked at Jasper, and he raised his eyebrows and stared back patiently. "Carlisle and Esme are on vacation in South America, and Rosalie and Emmett are in Alaska, visiting the other group I mentioned."

"They left, Rosalie and Emmett left, because of me. You don't have to try to hide it." I laughed humorlessly, becoming slightly annoyed at the polite verbal response from Alice in comparison to her thoughts of the fight between herself, Jasper, and Rosalie days ago. I realized that Rosalie's voice was the third voice I heard during my transformation.

"I know how she feels about me. I heard her mind; I heard your fight. It's not like I asked for this; it's not like I had a choice."

"Please don't be mad, Edward. I know. I know it's unfair." Alice again crouched down next to me, gently resting her small hand on my knee. "Rosalie will get over it, I know, and it's okay too if you resent us. You have every right to be upset. But it will all work out in the end, I promise."

"And you would know that, right?" I asked sarcastically. "You had seen me with you, running through the woods - other woods than these, sometime in the future - before that cop even picked up Jasper, right?"

I remembered her first thought of me that I had picked out of her head. I was pissed that she was so empathetic and understanding; I was pissed that she had this knowledge of me, of what would happen. Part of me wanted to hate them, hate what they had done. But there was just so much going on in my head; I was still taking in everything around me, all of my senses overloaded, still absorbing the thoughts of the two strange people before me, that I couldn't even properly hold onto my anger.

I abruptly stood up, and Alice tumbled back as I pushed her off me. Like a cat she righted herself before hitting the ground, but almost simultaneously Jasper was on me, pushing me back against a tree, his hand around my throat.

"I understand you are upset, but you don't push Alice, understand?" Jasper's face still appeared impassive, but his emotions were betrayed by the tightening grip around my neck. I felt like a puppy that was being reprimanded.

I narrowed my eyes, and Jasper pushed harder in response. I could feel the tree creak and strain against the force. Jasper held my gaze for a long moment before slowly releasing my neck and taking a step back.

My gaze broke from his freaky red eyes, and my anger disintegrated and was replaced with fear and sadness and homesickness. I missed my apartment. I missed my friends and my family. I was due to call Mom and Dad; I hadn't talked to them in almost three weeks. I wondered when I could talk to them – could I?

I slid down the tree, rested my elbows against my knees, and pushed the heels of my hands into eyes.

"God, when will this day be over?" I mumbled to myself.

"Oh, I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. It really will all be okay." Alice was still crouched down as I looked up at her, but she had inched herself closer to Jasper and myself. "But you should know, one of the physiological conditions of vampirism is that your body no longer needs to sleep, so you can't. You get all the time in the world, and you never get physically tired." A small smile played on her lips.

"Fuck." I gave up; I realized what I was homesick for. It wasn't just my home and my family and friends. I was homesick for myself.

[1] Umami. (n.d.) . (2005). Retrieved November 14 2009 from medical-dictionary[.]thefreedictionary[.]com/umami


	4. Chapter 4

**Disclaimer: All characters, etc. are property of Stephanie Meyer.**

**

* * *

**Sensory Homunculus: A physical representation of the primary motor cortex, i.e., the portion of the human brain directly responsible for the movement and exchange of sense and motor information (namely touch: sensitivity, cold, heat, pain etc.) of the rest of the body.  
The cortical homunculus is a visual representation of the concept of "the body within the brain" that one's hand or face exists as much as a series of nerve structures or a "neuron concept" as it does a physical form. This concept relates to many neuro-biological phenomena including "phantom limb" and "body integrity identity disorder". [1]

* * *

I sat cross-legged on the hardwood floor with my palms down, fingers slowly curling and straightening again and again against the grain. I was marveling at all of the grooves in the wood. I imagined a Who-ville city there on the floor, the raised indentions reminding me of roads and highways. I wondered if I was feeling the lines made by the machinery that cut the floorboards, or if I could actually differentiate the cells of the wood fiber.

I wondered, as a vampire, how much granularity there was in the world. I tried to remember if I knew anything about the cellular structure of plants. All I ended up picturing were long, ropey strands of myofibrils and the physiology of striated muscle.

I was having trouble following a single thought process through – my mind was like a fast car I couldn't control; the slightest push on the gas and I was speeding away, thoughts skittering out through random bits of arcane trivia, memories of my past life, my immediate environment, my new consciousness.

I was trying to concentrate on watching Jasper fix the window in my new bedroom, the one I had decimated a few days earlier. The pale yellow walls of the room sparkled faintly from the sunlight reflecting off of our bodies.

"How do you do it? How do you keep your thoughts so orderly, so calm? I keep getting distracted by everything."

I watched the dust motes dance in the warm air, light filtering into the humid room through the cracks in the exterior wall. Jasper smiled to himself as he pushed a nail through the plywood and plaster with his finger. It was freaky watching him work without tools.

"I've had a lot of practice." Jasper said as he picked up another nail. "It's like anything—you'll get used to it. Give it some time. As the newborn strength slowly wears off and the extreme hunger abates, your mind calms down. I'd tell you to have patience, but I know it's pointless to even try at this point. Give yourself things to think about, try to stay distracted. There are a lot of books in the house, I've always found reading helps."

I think this was the most I've heard Jasper say at one time. He was more loquacious with Alice gone. She had been flitting in and out, always busy, bringing back things for my new room, canceling her and Jasper's registration for college that fall (ironically she was scheduled to start medical school with me in the next few weeks), talking with the rest of the family about their next step now that I was there.

She had left early this morning, although this time I knew it wasn't just to run errands; she was trying to give me space. She had said she would try to go by my apartment and pick up some of my things. Jasper always stayed behind, to watch over me like I was some puppy that wasn't housebroken.

I would normally feel bad about disrupting their lives so thoroughly, but hey, it wasn't my fault, was it? And the changes in their lives were like a small ripple in comparison to the cosmic shift in mine. Jasper appeared on the surface to be taking everything in stride, but with my newly acquired gift I knew he was struggling more than he was letting Alice know.

"Look, man, I don't want to get in the middle of anything, it's not my business, but I can't try to mediate anything between the two of you knowing I can read both of your minds. I can't keep secrets while trying to also wrap my mind around the whole fucking vampire thing, and the mind reading thing, and the whole 'never seeing my family or friends or going back to my real life' thing, so..." I lost my train of thought as I watched Jasper pick up the newly purchased antique window. He was holding it all wrong, like he had picked up a piece of paper. I didn't know if he really realized how freaky it looked when he didn't try to pretend to be human.

I closed my eyes and swallowed, trying to regain control of my mind.

"Look, it's just, I'm sorry I'm inconveniencing you here, but you were the one..." _who bit me, ripped my fucking throat out _"...look, I'm sorry. I apologize in advance for saying the wrong thing to Alice when she gets back."

Jasper had stopped working during my little speech, still holding the entire window gently between two fingers. I could tell he was trying not to smile, not to be so fucking patronizing. I looked back at the floor. I knew I was being petulant, but reconciling the polite look on Jasper's face with his actual thoughts was starting to test my patience.

"I know this is difficult for you. I admit, it threw me for a loop when you mentioned that Alice had a vision of you, turned, long before I went into the city last week." Jasper carefully set the glass back on the slanted, broken bed, and moved to sit down in front of me.

He had yet to mention the fight that he and Alice had the day before, supposedly out of my hearing range. It was stupid for them to go to the other side of the house, as if they didn't know with I would pick up every word, spoken and unspoken.

I would have tried not to eavesdrop but since the entire conversation centered on the revelation that Alice had known Jasper would turn me, I didn't do so well at tuning them out. I was, however, a little embarrassed at how scared and saddened Alice was by my subsequent outburst.

After I finished yelling at her, I hadn't spoken to her in almost twenty-four hours. In Jasper's thoughts I could tell he was torn, livid that I would upset Alice more, but also a little confused and angered himself that Alice hadn't mentioned her vision about me earlier.

I didn't look up to meet Jasper's gaze as he started talking again.

"Alice and I rarely keep secrets from each other, and it surprised me. I'm sure she had a good reason - I trust her implicitly. I'm sorry that we have put you in a bad position; Alice means well; she has a kind heart. I'm sure as you realize how difficult your gift can be for you, it is the same for Alice. She has trouble sometimes living in the present when her mind so often jumps ahead. I know how much she likes you; we are both happy that you're here, despite the circumstances." Jasper sat patiently, waiting for me to think.

I curled my fingers a little too hard and dug grooves into the floor.

"Shit." I murmured as a tried to smooth out the grooves with my fingertips, as if I was playing with putty. "I..."

I looked up at Jasper's face. He would have been handsome before, in his real life, I realized, before the scars and the creepy red eyes. I knew from his memories that he was from the south, and an image of his dressed up as an extra in Lonesome Dove popped into my head.

"Have you ever tried to ride a horse since you changed, or would you just eat it?" I blurted out. Damn, I was having so much trouble keeping my head wrapped around a single conversation.

Jasper laughed loudly at my non-sequitur.

"In those days I wasn't eating animals." He said wryly. Images filled his head, dark, warm, heady images of previous hunts decades ago. Thoughts he rarely touched on in my presence, a conscious decision on his part, I had read from his thoughts.

He didn't want to tempt me with memories of his previous life while I was still so volatile. The type of memories that Alice didn't have to tempt me with.

My eyes drifted shut as we both focused in on one particularly strong memory from his past. Even with Jasper's undercurrent of thoughts of shame and regret it was inappropriately delicious – I could almost taste the adrenaline-soaked sweat of the girl in his mind, her tears, her fear a bright, sharp note in the bouquet of her scent. The memory of her skin, the details of goosebumps and the hair raised on her neck, the steady thump thump thump of her carotid.

The memory shifted focus to Jasper's pale, scarred fingers sweeping her hair away from her neck, and I could hear the memory of the girl's shallow breathing as he pulled her body flush to him. His memory of lust, of blood lust, and the smell, my god, the smell of her skin, her sweat, her blood under the thin film of skin and tissue.

The warm, sunlit bedroom faded further away as Jasper's memory honed in on feeling of his teeth sinking into her skin. Even only as a century-old memory the physical relief, the indescribable euphoric high of that first rush of blood into his mouth was almost orgasmic.

I realized that the memory was not just of that young sweet girl, but an overlay of dozens, hundreds of those first moments. Each time was another first time, that first high that drug addicts so desperately seek to recreate, recreated over and over and over.

The floorboards under my hands split in two as I realized that I was in there, his freshest and clearest memory.

My stomach clenched as I realized my bloodlust, spurned on by Jasper's memories and maybe his own empathetically projected feelings, was for myself, my own neck and skin and sweat-soaked scrubs in that walk-in refrigerator a week ago.

I opened my eyes and saw him staring at me, my own lust reflected in his face. For one long moment everything froze, and my overactive brain had finally fallen silent. I couldn't process this. It was too much.

Jasper grabbed my shoulders and whipped me up and around as he stood, and he practically pushed me down the stairs.

"We have to go hunt. Now."

Gripping my arm, he dragged me through the front door, and in one fluid movement my body was flying into the woods as Jasper threw me forward. I used the momentum to run faster than I ever had before.

I didn't let myself think as I ran; I emptied my mind of everything except the sounds and smells of the trees and moss and damp earth. I started to pick up on the faint scent of something rich and foreign.

Alice had mentioned before that carnivores smelled richer and muskier than herbivores, and I smiled grimly at the thought of drinking something more satisfying. Of course it still wouldn't be anything in comparison to the memories that I had pulled from Jasper's head.

I broke through the thick underbrush and almost tripped over the waist-high tan body of a mountain lion.

As I fell forward my hands acted on their own accord, and I pulled the cat with me. I held it against my chest as I lay on my back, its head whipping back and forth as it tried to flip itself over. The cat's snarls intermingled with my own as I tried to hold it still.

The animal leaned far to the left to try and gain momentum to flip back over, and I turned my head and sank my teeth into its neck. On our backs the cat was almost as long as I was, and its heavy weight along my body was... it felt good. I closed my eyes, and, unbidden, the image of the girl from Jasper's memory returned. I pictured her on top of me, struggling.

I flipped us over and dug up dirt and moss as I wrapped my arms around the warm, writhing body below me.

My mouth never left the lion's neck through all of this, and my mind still on that girl. I tried to remember the memory of the taste of human blood, and thought that this wasn't too far off. It felt almost masturbatory, trying to trick my body into imagining someone else was with me when I was alone.

An image of myself, cradling a dead animal on the forest floor, pushed away any thoughts of a human body beneath me. I realized that the image was Jasper's mind's eye, and he'd caught up to me. Disgusted, I pushed myself up and off of the carcass.

"I'm just an animal, now, is that it?" I asked quietly, as I kneeled next to the mangled cat.

"You always were, but with grocery stores and McDonald's you never were forced to think about it." Jasper paused a second, looking from the cat to me and back again. "I'm sorry."

"For what? For pushing those thoughts into my head? For thinking of me like..." I ran my hands through my hair, unintentionally coating it with blood. "Fuck!"

"I'm sorry for it all. It's hard to separate the different desires when you are new. You have to understand, I hadn't tasted human blood in over twenty years when I found you in the morgue. It' s almost like starting over as a newborn, like you. When you... when it gets to be too much, you have to redirect your energy right away. It always helps to run and to hunt, even if you're not thirsty. Better to take out any aggressions out here than... other places." Jasper's thoughts were much calmer now.

He was trying to focus on Alice, and his family, his lonely years of wandering, wallowing in depression. The calm joy he had now and the life he had help build. I could feel his sensible calm spread out over me.

"We need to go back. Alice called while I was running after you and has something to tell you. She said it would make you feel better."

He tentatively reached his hand out. I let him help pull me up off the ground, although with my new strength it was only a symbolic gesture. I had to keep reminding myself that I couldn't completely push Jasper and Alice away. They were all I had now.

When we got back to the house Alice was there. A full-sized U Haul sat in the driveway, god knows why. I had only needed for some books and my laptop from my apartment.

We walked up the steps of the porch and through the open door, straight into the large living room. I froze in my tracks, and Jasper nimbly sidestepped around me instead of plowing into my back.

He walked over to Alice, who looked very pleased with herself as she stood next to the imperial grand Bösendorfer.

"What... ? Where did you... this thing is huge." I walked up to the piano, reached out but stopped myself before touching the glossy black lid. My hands were covered in dried blood.

"I saw all of the music books in your apartment, and I knew you needed something to keep you occupied while you're on house arrest here." Alice couldn't contain her grin as she wrapped her arm around Jasper's waist. "I drove by a showroom on the way out of town, and decided it would be a nice investment."

"If I don't break it." I muttered as a slowly circled the piano. It was a beast, over nine feet long. As large as the living room was, the piano dwarfed the space. "Can you open the lid? My hands..." I held up my arms, showing the gore I was still covered in.

"Oh! Of course! And, you know, we can always order more sheet music online. I think it would be really good practice for you, to help you deal with your new strength, you'll find your dexterity greatly improved so that should help. It's also good to have a healthy outlet like music to help deal with everything, you know?" Alice pulled up at the lid, and I stared at the gleaming keys, the bottom nine in a matte black. "I found that reading and drawing really helped me in the first few years, before I found Jasper."

"This is too much." It was insane. I didn't know exactly how much these cost, but I could guess.

"Oh, don't worry! Ha, and wait until you see the car I ordered for you! You'll love it, and it was way more expensive!"

I stared at her.

"Don't worry about money. Carlisle's been pulling in a paycheck as a doctor for over 150 years, and I've been predicting trends in the stock market since Jasper and I joined the family. Vampires don't have a lot of overhead, so we have a tendency to buy a lot of toys."

"Toys." I thought of my last impulse buy, a docking station for my iPod.

"I have some other good news as well, as I mentioned to Jasper on the phone. Why don't you go take a shower and change, and we can talk." Her manic smile had shifted into something softer, more bittersweet.

I could hear her trying to shield things from me in her mind, so I left the two of them standing in the living room. I kept my hands out in front of me as I walked up the stairs and tried not to touch anything.

I wondered briefly if I could get Alice to snag me a box of latex gloves for the next time I went hunting. I was used to being covered in blood and gore at work, but I realized there was definitely a psychological barrier when there was a layer of latex involved. I snorted at my thought and went to my room, the window still sitting on my bed, the floor marred with two concave indentions.

[1]Sensory homunculus. (n.d.) . (2005). Retrieved November 14 2009 from http :// encyclopedia[.]Thefreedictionary[.]com/Sensory+Homunculus

**Author's Note: Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! Thanks again to Feisty for beta'ing this, and thanks to everyone for reading!**


	5. Chapter 5

**Disclaimer: All characters, etc. are property of Stephanie Meyer.**

**

* * *

**Mental Image Generation: "Generating a mental image can be thought of as, roughly speaking, running the process of perception backwards. . . . An important difference between bottom-up perception and top-down image generation concerns the automaticity of the processes involved. One cannot see a familiar object and fail to recognize it. But we often think about familiar objects without inexorably calling to mind a visual mental image. This suggests that the activation of [low level vision processing centers of the brain] from memory. . . . This is the process of image generation." [1]

* * *

When I returned downstairs Jasper and Alice were sitting next to each other on one of the oversized white couches, with the television playing CNN softly in the background. It was the first time I had seen anyone use it. Both of the vampires were staring at me.

I felt apprehensive; over the past few days I had been trying very hard to learn to block them out when I was farther away from them in the house, but even up in the shower I was picking up on something very, very bad. I was not looking forward to finding out what could spook a fucking vampire.

Alice leaned forward as I sat on the floor across from them.

"Edward, I wish I didn't have to tell you all of this. I don't want to worry you, but it wouldn't be right to give you only half of the story now and have you pick the rest out of my head later." Alice paused and looked out of the window. It was funny; I could hear her try and decide the best way to explain what was going on, but I was hearing it all as she decided.

"It's pointless to try and sugarcoat any of this, right?" Alice laughed as she came to the same realization. "Okay, so I haven't got the chance to tell all of the details to Jasper either, so this is as much for his benefit as yours.

"When I had my original vision two weeks ago, I saw Jasper changing you, just as it happened, then other images of the two of us together after you became a vampire. You saw some of that during the end of your transformation, right?" I nodded, and tried hard not to say something snide in return.

"While I was in town today, I smelled something, and it triggered another vision. There is another vampire, at least one more, in Seattle," Alice continued.

Jasper's eyes narrowed at this information.

"You should have come home straight away; we need to call the rest of the family back right now," Jasper said as he stood and pulled out his cell phone. He walked a few feet away as he started dialing.

"Wait, what? Not someone you know? Is this someone who..." I drifted off as thoughts of the mountain lion and Jasper's memories filled my head. "Are they hunting? In the city?"

I felt my stomach bottom out as I thought about my parents, my friends. My mom, who always insisted on taking the late bus home from her private practice. Bella, soft and helpless, walking between parked cars outside of the bar. I hadn't realized that I was standing until Alice grabbed my shirtsleeve.

"Edward, this is why I didn't want to tell you everything. I am watching what will happen; your family won't be in danger. Besides, your bloodlust is completely out of control. You would be more of a danger than a help. You absolutely cannot go near people now."

"Well..." I looked back and forth between Alice and the door, trying to think of a rebuttal. The only thing I could think to say was, "Why the hell would you call this good news?"

"The vision it triggered was something I had actually seen before, a memory of a vision really. You have to understand—the way my gift works, it's not selective. Some of what I see is very helpful. But most is junk, stuff not worth focusing on, and it's pretty much a constant, like that TV in the background. Fashion trends, celebrity gossip, all kinds of weather patterns, newspaper headlines, what our neighbor ten miles down the road will do tomorrow. I have visions based on what I'm attuned to and things that pertain to me, but still most of that is superfluous. I ignore most of my visions, like you are trying to learn and tune out the voices in your head. A month ago I had a vision of you being bitten, but not by Jasper. I hadn't made the connection until I realized there was someone else in the city."

"What?" Jasper was back at Alice's side, closing his cell phone and leading her back to the couch. "Who? It's this vampire that you smelled in the city, correct? Is it a nomad? Someone one we know, or have heard of?" Jasper looked at Alice while he questioned her, but Alice kept her gaze steady on me as she answered him.

"No, I'd never seen them before. I think, though, that's the reason why I had my other visions, and why I felt so strongly about making sure you turned Edward. In my subconscious I must have known that if we didn't get to Edward first, his fate would be much, much worse. I hope you understand a little better now, Edward." Alice continued to stare at me, her mental voice strong and clear.

_Edward, please, I beg you, let me keep some secrets for a while longer. Jasper cannot know yet. I promise I will answer your questions when we are alone, but please, please help me protect him._

I focused on not reacting to this private message as I picked images out of Alice's head, the vision of me bent over a park bench, covered in blood, most of my body blocked from view by a petite woman.

_She would have turned you, and if you had to be damned, at least this is the lesser of two evils, right? _Alice pleaded in her mind. The images were so real. I realized something else, too: Alice knew who this vampire was.

"Thank you for telling me, Alice. You're right, I don't think... you saved me from something... God. I can't even think about it." I turned, trying to keep my face a mask as I walked to the piano. Alice had stacked all of my old piano books on top, and they looked so shabby and simple on top of the Bösendorfer.

I tried to force my mind to ignore what Alice had shown me in her mind and what she had told me. I knew that Jasper would be able to pick up my change in mood, and I wanted to help Alice. I wanted to keep her secret to try and make up for my earlier anger and our fight.

I sat on the piano bench, facing away from Alice and Jasper, and softly ran the pads of my fingers along the keys as I tried to focus instead on the piano. I was terrified of breaking it. I picked up the book on the top of the stack – _Miscellaneous Keyboard Works: Toccatas, Fugues and Other Pieces_, Johann Sebastian Bach. It fell open to page 229, where I had broken the spine. I propped the music on the piano, and very slowly and softly started to pick out the opening notes of the Partita.

I really wasn't that good, before. I took lessons as a kid, I had played the keyboard in a bad Coldplay-inspired band in high school, and for a few semesters I took private lessons at UW. Now, however, even though I was tentative and scared of breaking the keys I could tell that this was something else that had been freakishly refined and improved with my new body. Trying to keep the pressure on the keys as light as possible, I sped up the notes until the Partita was at its intended tempo, which was something I could never properly accomplish before.

I closed my eyes and let the repetitive and almost meditative music pull me forward. I was relieved that the muscle memory of the piece had not been burned out of my fingers during my transformation.

After a few minutes, Alice and Jasper drifted off together. I kept my eyes closed as I finished the Bach, and started playing a Chopin Étude. I could hear their soft footsteps going up the stairs, and I concentrated on the music and tried to tune out their soft whispers. I hated how halted their private conversions were, their thoughts full of concern about me and more than a little weariness about my intrusive gift.

I got up from the piano and said out loud, "I'm going for a walk in the woods. I promise I won't go far, and I'll bring the cell phone with me."

"Okay," Alice's faint voice drifted downstairs.

It would only be the second time I'd been without a constant chaperone. Although the house was extremely isolated, Alice and Jasper acted as if I would take the first opportunity on my own to bolt and go on a killing spree.

Although, who was I to say that I wouldn't? If I couldn't handle Jasper's memories, God knows what I would do if I ran across someone. I slowly walked down the steps of the porch and started around the house, trying to practice my human gait.

Once Alice had explained that their lifestyle allowed them to lead almost-human lives, my main goal was to get through the next year of bloodlust with as many of my human mannerisms intact as possible. The thought that life could return to some semblance of normal, even though I had to give up my family and everyone I knew, gave me some degree of hope.

The urge to run was hard to control, but I did my best to concentrate on placing one foot slowly in front of the other, looking down at the ground. I walked in ever-expanding concentric circles away from the large white farmhouse.

The feel of the well-manicured lawn under my bare feet brought back memories of my childhood, of summers spent at my grandmother's house in the country. But like everything else, it wasn't quite the same. To my newly honed senses it felt like a bizarre approximation of the real thing, like Astroturf constructed out of silk. I could feel the tiny crickets and pill bugs I was crushing with my toes.

At the edge of the yard I deviated from my spiraling path and cut straight out in to the forest. Another hundred yards into the woods and Alice and Jasper's mental voices started to fade a bit. I knew that at about a mile I would not be able to hear them at all; we had tested that on the second day after I had woken up.

I stopped under a moss-covered maple tree, closed my eyes, and tried to concentrate on their mental voices. They had heard me enter the woods and thought I had completely left, and I could tell they both had stopped trying to guard their thoughts. I should have kept walking; I should have given them their privacy.

To be honest, although I wanted to help Alice I was still a little pissed, and I really wanted to hear more about her visions and what she wanted to keep from Jasper. It was childish to try and justify this, but I didn't care. A neonate wasn't supposed to be able to control their emotions, according to Jasper, so if it was out of my control there was no need to feel guilty.

Although their minds were quieter from this distance, I could still hear their voices very clearly.

"I know you're still mad at me, but I hope that you understand now that I had good reason. We just couldn't leave him..."

"Leave him to what? We can't interfere with every nomad that crosses our path. We can't save every life, Alice. I'm sorry."

"He wasn't going to be killed; he would have been turned. Would you want that, a newborn let loose in the city where we'll hopefully live for the next ten years? Not to mention what it would have done to Edward. Knowing that we stopped that, Jasper, I won't feel guilty for that. I can't."

There was a long pause before Jasper spoke again.

"I'm not angry with you. I won't lie; it's been hard this past week. I never thought I'd be training someone again. It brings up things I thought I'd left behind decades ago."

"I love you, Jasper, and I trust you, and you're doing an amazing job—you know that, right? Edward will be happy with us, with the family. I've seen it. And you know your past doesn't matter to me. It wasn't your fault; you know how I feel about that. If someone was there to save you, save you from Maria? That's what we are, _you_ are, to Edward. Don't forget that."

They stopped talking then, and their faint thoughts shifted and warmed. It took me a minute to catch on, because for both of them (and especially Alice) the straightforward, narrative quality of the inner voices dissipated and was replaced with something much less coherent. At this point I was leaning back against the moss-covered tree.

I tilted my head up, opening my eyes to watch the faint gray light filter through the canopy. I was thinking about moving on, finally leaving Alice and Jasper their privacy, when I heard Alice say, "Please, Edward won't be back for hours, not until Emmett and Rosalie get here. I miss you."

My eyes drifted closed again when I realized what I was seeing in their minds' eyes, in stereo. Jasper's thoughts were not only of Alice's smooth, sweet skin as he kissed her neck, but also thoughts of memories of them hunting together, Alice laughing with her head thrown back, the two of them naked and writhing in a snowbank.

In the back of his mind there was a very faint memory of eating wild strawberries as a child. Alice's mind was scattered and almost impossible to follow. She was free-associating colors, random images of paisley and dirt roads and soft velvet and leather and on top of all of this, memories and visions of Jasper, and the dizzying double vision of what was happening right then, and what would happen next.

I sat down hard, and my hands dug into the moss and dirt. I should get up and run. This was beyond intrusive, beyond simple voyeurism. I realized dimly that the electronic impulses of the vampire brain must move faster than the speed of sound, because I saw in both of their minds Jasper picking up Alice by the waist and slamming her against the wall a half a second before the sound of the plaster cracking reached my ears.

A beat later, I could hear the faint sound of Alice laughing. I stopped breathing, stopped moving completely. I was transfixed. I could feel through Jasper's mind his hand skimming up under Alice's skirt as she braced her foot against the top of the dresser; I felt his excitement spike as he heard her hum in reaction to the action of his fingers.

I could feel how Jasper's curly hair tickled Alice's neck as he sucked on her earlobe. Alice could barely contain her excitement as she saw what would happen: Jasper shifting again, and replacing his fingers with something else, grinding her into the wall.

Jasper picked up on her impatience and laughed, low and quiet in her ear, "You never change, do you, sweetheart? Now you'll have to wait for what you want."

Alice whined in response, arching up into him. He laughed again as he pulled away and sunk to his knees. When I realized Jasper had shifted the focus of his senses from touch and sight to taste and smell, I pulled myself from my stupor and stood.

I breathed in deeply, tasting the scents of the forest, the animals, the earth, the damp underbrush and ferns covering the ground, and ran off into its depths.

The Hoh rainforest was a thick, impenetrable tunnel of green. I had been running for hours, trying to clear my head of what I had witnessed, feeling sick and guilty. I worried about the conversation I had with Alice, and I worried about my family.

I wondered if Alice's gift would let her on to the fact that I had been eavesdropping on them. I hoped to God it didn't. I didn't even try to avoid feeling homesick or sorry for myself.

I wanted to be home, walking to work, drinking with Angela and Ben, out to dinner with my parents. I missed my small apartment. I missed the view out my window of the city street. I missed the sounds of people and cars and human life buzzing around me like a security blanket.

I thought not only of what I was missing each day, but my whole future that I was being forced to abandon. My life had been planned out for years – medical school, hopefully a residency on the west coast, then back to Seattle, become a GP, get married, have kids, retire, die. I had known what I wanted to do since I was fourteen, and it was so reassuring to know I didn't have to worry.

My future had been an easy, gently sloping path, and it had been effortless to put one foot in front of the other and follow it. My small indiscretions weren't even deviations from the path; drinking too much in college, sleeping around some, taking the job at the ME's office were in a way as expected of me as my cum laude GPA and my 32 on the MCATs. And now, now everything was blown wide open.

Jasper and Alice thought they were being encouraging when they talked of going back to school after my neonate year; I could major in anything! I could study dozens of different things, rack up PhDs like middle school sports trophies. Or not, because I could also travel the world, see anything, the sun my only limiting factor. I could do both; I could do everything. And I had _forever_.

I felt like a trapdoor had opened beneath my feet; the floor of my small, comforting world had dropped out, and I was free-falling through dark, endless space.

The Hoh River glittered as I ran beside it, despite the overcast sky, and the rippling current offered up its beauty as a distraction from my misery. I studiously tried to ignore my surroundings. I didn't want to be distracted and get pulled out of my funk.

I laughed humorlessly to myself; apparently with newborn strength and speed also came the surliness of a moody teenager.

I thought I had been following the paths that Alice and Jasper had led me on over the past week, but the trees started to thin unexpectedly. The smells of the forest changed as well. The pungent, warm smell of the earth gave way to something manufactured, and man-made maybe?

Then it hit me, something so intense it should have knocked me down. Instead it was pulling me forward, against my own volition. Gravity had shifted: instead of being held down to the earth I was pulled forward, falling towards the scent. Nothing had ever felt this powerful.

I dimly remembered Alice's voice, remembered her warnings about crossing paths, and how there was something important I was supposed to do, or avoid. I didn't really care what it was. I was lost, my conscious mind fading away and darkness closing in on all sides.

Everything sharpened down to this need, so desperate and so great that my own identity in my mind seemed like a faint shadow, a memory.

In the distance I could start to make out sharp lines and ninety-degree angles, the shape of the house contrasting with the organic shapes of the forest. I started to hear, too, hear the almost primordial beat; I didn't know if I was really hearing or imaging the whooshing intake of the vacuum filled after the systolic contraction, blood rushing in to fill the atrial and ventricular cavities, the lopsided pulsating beat, valves flapping open and closed.

A memory of work, of doing an autopsy entered my mind, and the thought of that distinct musky smell of an open chest cavity obliterated any remaining thoughts of Alice's warnings. I wanted that – I wanted to break a sternum in half with my hands, crack open the ribcage and sink my teeth into that hot pulsating muscle.

I closed in on the house, one hundred yards, fifty yards, and I could think of nothing else, my senses shut down to the world around me as I focused everything I had on the smell of blood, the sound of the beating heart.

Then with a deafening crack my axis shifted again, and everything went black. I was no longer moving; I was buried face down the earth from the force of the impact. I tried to draw in a deep breath but instead I got a mouthful of dirt.

The shock of this and the loss of the smell of blood broke the haze, and before I could wrap my mind around what had happened, I was being pulled up and off of the ground. I was disoriented, and all I could see was the ground flying past me, upside down.

By the time I realized I was being carried, thrown over someone's shoulder, we stopped moving. I realized I smelled that distinctly sweet vampire scent, and I wondered for a moment if it was Jasper that had me.

But then I was unceremoniously dumped on the ground, and I looked up and saw the hulking form of Emmett.

"Hey man, the first time you trip up, you try and kill Mr. Beale? He's like ninety years old and in a wheelchair. That's cold, dude. Not to mention he's going to be our neighbor so we need to play nice. I'm Emmett, by the way. Good timing, we were driving right by when Alice called to warn us." Emmett grinned as he said this, rocking back and forth on his feet.

Emmett was a study in contrasts – huge, terrifyingly intimidating, but with such a warm, open face you couldn't help but like him. We were standing, well, _he_ was standing, and I was still sprawled out on the ground, by the side of a road. A car was idling nearby. I stood and spit out the rest of the dirt that was in my mouth.

"Edward," I said as I held out my hand, and Emmett shook it enthusiastically. "Thank you, for stopping me back there. I... Jesus, is it always like that, when you smell humans?"

"No, don't worry about that. You're, what, only a week old? Give it some time. It'll get better. I'm glad though that you were so far gone that I was able to surprise you. If you had heard me coming I wouldn't have had a chance of stopping you." I raised my eyebrows as I took that in, looking again at Emmett's massive, muscle-bound frame.

"Newborn strength, man, it's fun while it lasts, but it's a major pain in the ass for everyone around you," Emmett said as he turned to the car and called out, "Hey, Rose, aren't you even going to get out of the car? Come and say hi!"

It was a minute before we heard the faint "no" from the interior of the BMW.

Emmett reached out and patted my shoulder as he said, "Hey, wait a minute. Lemme go talk to Rose." He walked towards the car, his arms out and palms up in apology.

He must have not looked too remorseful though; I could see Rosalie through the windshield rolling her eyes. He leaned in through the driver's side window, and they started talking softly. I looked away from the car, up the road. It had started getting dark, but I could still make out mountains in the distance.

We were on a particularly open stretch of road (the 101, maybe?), and I could see a mountain range in the distance. This was the farthest horizon I'd seen since I'd woken up; the farmhouse was framed with tall evergreens, and we had never gotten up to any decent elevation in the forest when we had gone hunting.

Past the road I could make out individual trees and craggy rock faces that dotted the slopes of the Olympic mountain range. I imagined that if it was clear and sunny I would be able to make out individual branches, maybe even the needles on the pine trees.

I remembered taking an art course my freshman year; we focused on drawing, and my professor would tell us over and over how to look at something. How to look at an object in a still life, how to slowly follow the outline with your eyes, really see the shape and proportion of the thing, not what you thought you saw. How to echo with your pencil on paper your eyes tracing the edges. You had to retrain your mind to really see what was in front of you.

I focused in on the outline of a row of trees on the edge of the mountain that was silhouetted against the grayish purple sky. I focused further and realized that even now with the dimming light I could see the distinct outline of branches on each tree, the repeating fractal pattern pulling me in deeper and deeper.

I reluctantly turned back around when I heard Emmett approaching again.

He sighed and said, "Look, I'm sorry, but Rose is not, um, well, she just really wants to get back and talk to Alice and Jasper. Why don't we run home? It's more fun that way anyhow. I'll show you something cool on the way back."

He smiled and raised his eyebrows, waiting to my response.

"She doesn't want to get her car dirty, and she doesn't think I'll last another two days without killing someone. Look, Emmett, I don't want to step on anyone's toes or piss anyone off, but I don't have a lot of patience these days with people try to hide things from me," I said as I looked at him wearily.

"Hey, I understand! I'd forgotten about the whole mind-reading thing there. That must be pretty intense, huh? I'm sorry about Rosalie-" We were interrupted as we heard the car start back up and the tires squeal as the red convertible gunned past us, leaving us standing in a cloud of dust.

Emmett sighed and looked back at me. "Rosalie's, well, you just have to give her some time. She's a good person, and loyal almost to a fault. She just wants to protect the family, you know? She'll warm to you, eventually."

We both stood there for a minute. Then Emmett started to get impatient and was trying to hide in his mind what he wanted me to show me. I laughed when I realized that the "something cool on the way back" was a sixty-mile round trip out of the way.

"Wanna go?" I said, and we both crossed the road and took off running into the woods.

Unlike Jasper or Alice, Emmett liked to talk while we ran. He told me a lot more about the day-to-day life as a Cullen than either Alice or Jasper had, and filled me in on a lot of their exploits.

Apparently, none of them had an interest in holding down a desk job when their net worth was the equivalent of the GDP of a small country, except for Carlisle of course. He was the motivating factor for moving every ten to fifteen years, and the rest of the family helped to try and keep him practicing medicine as often as possible. With that came the occasional need to go though high school again, starting as young as possible in a new city.

Apparently Carlisle also did more than just practice medicine. With no need to sleep and a limit on how many hours he could put in at the hospital and still appear human, he would write hundreds of anonymous letters to the editor for medical and biological journals. It turned out they were all quasi-academics, with dozens of publications under multiple pseudonyms.

"Yeah," Emmett said as he ducked under a fallen red cedar. "It's tough for them; it really gets under Rosalie's skin that none of her patents are under her name. When you have this massively capable brain and all of the free time in the world, TV and hunting and just hanging out get boring after awhile. I mean, I enjoy debating stuff and reading and all, but I don't get into it as much as the others."

"Alice didn't either until the past twenty years or so. She was really only into art, and fashion and design for the longest time, but Esme wanted some company in a sociology class, and Alice was hooked. She doesn't remember anything about being human, so she's really fascinated and loves to study people now. I bet she's just creaming herself over having you here, being recently human and all," Emmett said as he grinned at me. I wasn't quite sure how to respond, so I focused on running.

We were gaining elevation and going much farther east into the park than I had with Jasper or Alice. The flora was changing; it was sparser and thinner. The trees were shorter, and wildflowers carpeted the ground.

"Oh, man, just wait! Jasper hasn't brought you up here yet, has he?" Emmett asked. I didn't have the heart to tell him that picturing the place in his mind had already ruined the surprise for me.

It was pretty cool, though, and something I never would have had the patience or stamina to hike to as a human.

"No," I answered, "I haven't been this far east yet. I think Alice and Jasper were trying to keep me pretty close to the house, away from hiking trails."

The sun had set at this point, and I could see the night sky now that the forest canopy was almost completely gone. Then the trees thinned out completely, and the soil turned to rock, and even though it was August, there was snow on the ground.

A few minutes more of jumping from rock to rock and we had reached the peak of the mountain. Emmett took the highest point of the summit and spread out his arms.

"Well," he said, "what do you think? It's the blue glacier. Apparently it's pretty tough for most people to get up here. You haven't seen it before, have you?"

I shook my head no in response and looked out over the glacier, which sparkled under the faint light from the stars and looked farther to the mountains and beyond. The clouds had dissipated, and for once we had a clear night.

To the west I could see as far as the Pacific on the horizon, and to the east I could faintly make out the city lights of Seattle. Home, I thought wistfully. Even on this moonless night the scene was fully illuminated beneath me, the colors of the landscape not lost as they would have been with dull human eyes, just different, richer and deeper and exotic.

I looked up then, and it was as if I had never seen the night sky before. I could see thousands – no, millions of stars. There barely seemed to be any negative space left in the sky. I had never really noticed before the staggering variety of stars, colors and sizes and patterns, the shimmering movement of some, and above all else the overwhelmingly bright smear of the Milky Way cutting the hemisphere in half.

I lay on my back, never taking my eyes off of the sky. I heard Emmett shift and sit down as well. The only sounds were the wind coming in from the ocean and cutting across the mountain range and something else, cracking, deep and resonate, as if Mount Olympus was settling beneath us.

[1] Farah, M. J. (2000). The Cognitive Neuroscience of Vision. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers.

**Author's Note: Like it? Hate it? "Nothing" it? Leave me a review and let me know!**

**Thanks again for reading! **


	6. Chapter 6

**Disclaimer: All characters, etc. are property of Stephanie Meyer.**

**

* * *

**Hypovolemic Shock: "The cardiovascular system initially responds to hypovolemic shock by increasing the heart rate, increasing myocardial contractility, and constricting peripheral blood vessels. This response occurs secondary to an increased release of norepinephrine and decreased baseline vagal tone (regulated by the baroreceptors in the carotid arch, aortic arch, left atrium, and pulmonary vessels). The cardiovascular system also responds by redistributing blood to the brain, heart, and kidneys and away from skin, muscle, and GI tract." [1]

* * *

You would think that five people in a three thousand square foot house would not feel cramped. Especially considering that none of them slept, or ate, or even needed to sit down. However, over the past week things were still a little weird between Alice and Jasper, I was desperately trying to avoid the both of them after my recent dabbling in mental voyeurism, and Rosalie was mad at everyone and still hadn't spoken a word to me.

I was actually glad that I had to hunt a lot as it got me out and away from everyone. I also found myself spending more and more time with Emmett, who was always more than happy to babysit me. He was the only one who seemed to be taking things in stride, and it was refreshing to talk to someone who didn't try to hide his thoughts.

Right now he was sitting with me in the garden in the late afternoon, the gnarled rose bushes and weeds swaying gently in the summer breeze.

I was trying to use my laptop outside, figuring maybe the natural light might help. Apparently the highest resolution of the monitor was still not even close to vampire-friendly, and the florescent lights in the house weren't helping.

"Try unfocusing your eyes a bit. Things will still look a little boxy, but you won't be so distracted by the individual pixels. TV was bad in the beginning too, back in the fifties." Emmett said as he leaned back and closed his eyes. "Man, it's nice to have a clear day, isn't it? I know why we have to stick to cloudy climates, but I miss the sun after awhile."

I tried out Emmett's advice, and found that after a minute I could start to read without getting completely distracted by each individual pixel making up each letter. I had tried to avoid reading the _Times_ online, but I couldn't help it. I wanted to know what was going on in Seattle, and more importantly I wanted to follow my own investigation.

I was more successful at avoiding my email; I knew if I opened it and saw the inevitable emails from my parents, I wouldn't be able to stop myself from replying. That would complicate things, considering Alice had driven my car off an isolated stretch of the I-90 at eighty miles an hour the night Jasper brought me to the farmhouse.

I didn't want to know where Alice got the body that she placed in the car before she set it on fire, and I wondered who did the autopsy. There wasn't a lot left to ID, but I was a little upset over the fact that none of my co-workers could figure out that it wasn't me. Did they let techs do autopsies for people they knew? Was there a policy for that? In my two months working there I had never encountered an autopsy of anyone remotely familiar. Maybe they flew someone in from Portland.

At this point, two weeks after my disappearance, and a week and five days after they found my car, they were finally ruling me an accidental death.

It was good news, though, that my staged death was being considered a freak accident, and it wasn't connected to the rash of disappearances and murders in the city. Everyone in the house thought that they were all associated with the vampire, or vampires, in town. That was another source of tension for everyone.

Since Carlisle and Esme weren't due back until tomorrow, no one wanted to make any decisions until they returned. Alice was being especially cagey, and I had a lot of questions about her newest visions which she had yet to disclose to anyone.

I closed my laptop after I had seen on the obits section of the _Times_ I now had an interactive page, with my obituary, details about my funeral with MapQuest directions to the funeral home, and over seventy-three comments.

I wasn't even close to being ready to read any of the details. Maybe my aunt would do the service; she was a minister for some progressive church in Oregon. I wondered how my parents were holding up. I wanted desperately to call them or see them, tell them "I'm here! I'm here! I'm okay!"

But I wasn't, really. I wasn't the same, I wasn't okay, and I would most likely kill them both before even realizing what I had done. Maybe I was really gone; maybe my staged death wasn't as much of a farce as I believed. Edward Masen was gone, gone forever. I was a Cullen now, I guess.

Emmett and I sat in silence for a few minutes. I could hear Alice and Jasper inside, discussing whether or not to go forward with a reconnaissance mission to the city. Jasper was all for the trip; he was tired of waiting around and wanted to have more information for Carlisle and Esme when they got back.

Alice was against it, saying that she had seen it would not go well. I knew she was lying; she hadn't had any direct visions about the trip. Rosalie was just throwing fuel on the fire, adding snide comments about the mess they had gotten the family in, and how they never should have left Alaska. They all fell silent for a moment when the news station on the TV announced another person missing.

"Alice, did you see this one, too?" Rosalie said.

"No... I don't understand. I saw the others; I had picked up at least something before it happened. This one must not have been premeditated." Alice's voice was soft. "I'm sorry, I'll try harder."

"I think that is a sure sign that there is newborn. Mature vampires aren't usually so spontaneous." Jasper sounded resigned, and I could hear him pacing across the floorboards in the dining room. "If someone is creating newborns and not controlling them, we need to go now. We need to know what we're up against, Alice."

I got up and walked to the house, not wanting to make things worse, but unable to keep quiet any longer. They all looked up when I walked into the dining room, Alice and Rosalie sitting at the table, and Jasper standing by the oversized window.

Emmett had followed me inside, but he had gone into the living room and started flipping channels instead.

"Alice, you said you could protect my family, watch to make sure nothing will happen. How can you know? If you missed this, how is anyone safe? You have to go to Seattle. Please." I tried to keep the anger out of my voice, but it was difficult.

Alice looked pained as she looked back and forth from me to Jasper. "I'm sorry, Edward." She was thinking of Jasper and of the female vampire she had seen killing again and again over the past few weeks. "I do think you're right, Jasper, about the newborn. Why can't we wait until Carlisle and Esme get back tomorrow?"

"I still can't believe the bad timing. They've never had this much trouble traveling before." Rosalie said as she got up and joined Emmett in the living room. He put his arm around her as she reached for the remote and turned the TV back to CNN.

Carlisle and Esme had been trying to leave South America for almost a week, but with the summer sun Alice hadn't been able to predict a flight plan that would keep them traveling at night until today.

It was interesting to watch the dynamics between the four vampires: you could tell that they were missing something, that they were waiting for their missing leader.

"Come on, Jasper. Why don't you, Rose, and I just take a drive around the outskirts of town? Even from a distance we might be able to smell who's out there, maybe guess how many there are. Alice, we won't pick a fight or try to engage. We'll be gone like two hours, and you can call if anything pops up on your radar," Emmett said as he turned around to face us.

He was trying to look serious, but I could tell he was itching to get moving and do something. Jasper looked at Alice and raised his eyebrows, and I knew he was more anxious than Emmett.

Alice threw her hands up in the air. "Fine! But don't you dare go north of SeaTac or east of the 405. I mean it!" She paused, and walked over to Jasper. She reached out and took his hand in hers. "Take Carlisle's car, too. The sun will stay out for the rest of the day, and it has the darkest windows. Two hours, okay?"

Jasper leaned into her and placed a gentle kiss on her forehead. I turned and quickly walked into the kitchen, the affection between them making me uncomfortable.

I stayed in the back of the house as the others got ready and left. I could hear Alice standing by the front door, probably watching the car leave. I waited, listening to hear her move towards the kitchen. We both stayed quiet and still, neither wanting to make the first move. I finally broke down and walked slowly through the narrow hall, into the open foyer.

"So, do you finally want to tell me who she is? I think I have a right to know." Alice didn't turn her head, but I could see her shoulders sag as I asked the question. "You're good, by the way. Better than the others at keeping your thoughts hidden from me."

"No one else needs to be so deceitful." Alice turned, and her sweet face was etched with sadness and remorse.

I hadn't seen a sign of her normally upbeat and cheerful personality in a long while, I realized.

"I need to do this for Jasper. I will do anything to protect him. It doesn't excuse my behavior, but I refuse to apologize for keeping him safe." Alice turned back around and walked onto the front porch.

As she sat on the steps, she pulled out her cell phone and held it in her lap. I followed her out and sat beside her, and we looked out over the front lawn and the long gravel driveway, which snaked its way into the woods.

The house was completely isolated, the driveway over a mile long through the dense forest before meeting up to the 101. It was as if the old farmhouse was on a small deserted island of grass, surrounded by an ocean of trees. It was funny, I thought. A few weeks ago I would have felt isolated, almost creeped out by the oppressively tall spruces caging the small yard.

I had never lived outside the city before, and although in a lot of ways I fit the whole Seattleite stereotype, I was never really all that outdoorsy. But now, now the forest felt like an oversized security blanket, a huge buffer protecting me from the world.

I had gotten so lost in my thoughts that it startled me when Alice started talking. Her mind hadn't prepared me for what she was going to say, and unlike most of the times that she spoke, there were no images in her head to flesh out her words.

"You've heard of child soldiers? Sudan, the Ivory Coast, Sierra Leone... Carlisle used one of our front organizations to fully fund an NGO in the late 90s..." Alice drifted off, staring into space. She sat perfectly erect, her hands cupping the cell phone in her lap gently, as if she was holding a delicate baby bird.

I waited for her to start talking again, but when she didn't I quietly said, "Yeah, I had to read this book for a political science class, _A Long Walk Home_? _The Long Way Home_? Something like that."

"_A Long Way Gone_." Alice corrected. "Jasper was the one who insisted we donate so much, although Carlisle was more than happy to. Jasper won't talk much about his past; he hasn't told me everything. But over the years I've pieced together most of what he went through. I think, when I started reading what was happening in Africa, I realized that's what it must have been like for him. Not that they used actual children, thank god. But when you wake up, and you're overcome with your surroundings and the bloodlust – you know. It's almost like being a child again. You can be easily manipulated."

"Wait, are you talking about vampire armies?" I said, horrified. I couldn't think of anything more terrifying.

Alice nodded. "In the south – South America, mostly, but it's happened before in Asia as well. Where there are densely populated areas and lots of sunlight, vampires have to fight for control of the food source. The only resource we care about," Alice said wryly.

"In the North with less daylight it's easier, and most vampires are nomads, wandering alone." She continued. "For most of the nineteenth century there were wars in the south, fighting for control of places like Mexico City. The smart ones created armies of newborns, strong and powerful but difficult to control. So instead of drugs, like what was done in Africa with humans, they used blood and sex to control the foot soldiers."

"And that's what Jasper was."

"Yes."

"And that's who Maria is, right? That name you keep thinking about, the one who would have turned me – she knew him then? She was one of the 'commanding officers'?" I guessed.

"She created him. She was the one creating and controlling the newborns, controlling him. She used his gift as a weapon, wielded him to keep the others in line." Alice paused for a long time before she started talking again. "They were good, I think, at what they did. They lasted longer than any other coven. They were one of the few that escaped the Volturi when they finally cracked down on the fighting."

"Who are the Volturi?"

Alice smiled grimly. "No one to worry about right now, hopefully."

I waited, but realized Alice wasn't going to answer that particular question. "How could Jasper leave? How did he find you? What happened?"

"He guessed that Maria was going to take him out, that he was growing too powerful and she couldn't fully manipulate and control him anymore. He had a few friends, fellow soldiers, who had escaped. They came back after a while to tell him about the North, that there was another possible life out there, besides the constant fighting. So Jasper slipped away one night and never looked back. I had seen him, in my visions, and I finally found him in 1948. It didn't take much to convince him to change his food source; he was sick with guilt over his past. Two years later we found the Cullens."

Neither of us spoke for a few minutes, listening to the sounds of summer insects in the forest. The sun was low in the sky, casting long shadows across the front yard.

"What are you afraid of, if Jasper finds out who is out there?" I asked softly.

I was amazed at how tightly reined in Alice's thoughts were, and I was trying pretty damn hard to figure out what was going on in her head. I was afraid that if I pushed her too hard she would shut me out completely.

"Maria found us, once before. It didn't go well. We had to abandon our home and leave immediately. She thought she loved Jasper, and she wanted him back. I guess even after all of these years she still hasn't changed her mind. Of course she never really did love him. I... my visions are subjective, based on decisions that are made. If someone changes their mind, the future changes, obliviously. I'm trying to make sure..." She drifted off again, frowning.

"It's like a game of chess for you, right?" I guessed. "You're testing out different moves, seeing what will happen."

A cold chill crept down my spine, and I swallowed. "Why... why did you let Jasper change me?"

"I told you before; I wanted to save you from Maria. I couldn't let you go through what Jasper went through, Edward! I..." Alice stopped talking abruptly, and the vision appeared in both of our minds.

Jasper and Emmett, out of the car and standing in the shadow of a building. Rosalie yelling at them from the passenger seat. Maria walking up to both of the men, smiling, a dozen yards away. I could see her face for the first time in this vision. She was Mexican, I guessed, and her dark completion overlaid on the pale marble-like skin made her look even more inhuman than any of the other vampire I'd seen so far. She was petite, and beautiful in that alien way that all vampires were beautiful, but she was very, very young. She had barely hit puberty when she was changed, like a deadly Lolita.

Jasper looked sick, and Emmett looked confused. Maria was laughing, and told Jasper that she had sent others to our house as soon as she saw them approaching the city. That Alice and "your new little pet, which you stole from me, by the way" were as good as dead. I realized that she was talking about me.

Then, almost too fast for me to follow, Jasper and Maria were gone – no, not gone, but had moved, met in the middle and they were embracing? It took me a minute to realize they were fighting, and then Emmett was there too, then Rosalie was also there before the car door she ripped from the frame had even hit the ground. There were others as well, strange vampires I didn't recognize. Half a dozen?

I barely had time to process it all before it stopped. Shakily I turned my head to Alice, and she was looking back at me, the terror bouncing back and forth between our eyes, like two mirrors held up to each other.

Without breaking my gaze, Alice very carefully lifted the cell phone to her ear as she pressed 'send.'

"Jasper, turn back now. They will see the car; they will provoke a fight. It won't end well. Please, get back here as quickly as possible." I could hear Jasper clearly through the phone. He sounded frustrated but agreed to turn around. I could hear Emmett in the background, complaining.

Alice and I sat in silence again, straining our ears for the sound of the car.

"Did you plan that? Was that another test move, to see how many there were?"

Alice's face crumpled. "Who do you think I am? Do you think I would put my family at risk? I'm not this person; I'm not some great mastermind... I don't want to have to do this, Edward. I don't."

"I'm sorry." I couldn't ever seem to say the right thing anymore. "But... what did she mean? In the vision?"

"What do you mean?"

"Didn't Maria say you and I were 'as good as dead'? How does she know about us? Do you really think she knows where we are?"

Alice got up and started pacing back and forth along the length of the porch. "Edward, she has no scruples; she wouldn't be above lying to Jasper. In fact, I'm certain that she doesn't know where we are; we would have smelled another vampire if they had found our house." Alice abruptly stopped walking, and we both saw the vision passing through her mind: Carlisle's car turning onto the driveway.

Alice smiled and sighed in relief. I turned my head back towards the front yard; I could now hear the car turning onto the start of the gravel driveway, a mile out.

I was still confused, though, and I turned back towards Alice. "But wait, I don't understand – how does Maria know about me? She mentioned 'your little pet' like she knew about me." My eyes narrowed. I couldn't believe how much Alice was still withholding.

"Edward..." Alice approached me slowly with her hand out, "I think she had already seen you, before Jasper changed you. I think she had already been following you and was planning on changing you."

"What?" I tried to pull up the faint human memories from the weeks before Jasper got to me, trying to see if I could remember seeing that freaky young girl anywhere in my memory, when it hit me like a battering ram.

She knew who I was. She must have seen my apartment, where I worked, what I did, where I went. My parents. My friends. Angela, and Ben, and Bella... Bella.

I was up and off the stairs and running around the house. I could hear Alice behind me, but I was quicker. I dodged trees, and I could hear Alice hitting a button again on her phone. Her voice got fainter and fainter as I gained speed.

"Jasper, Edward's going to try and run back to Seattle. He thinks his family's in danger, I think. Turn the car back around, go south... no wait, shit, she'll see you, go north on the 101 around the park, see if you can cut him off... oh, wait, have Emmett and Rosalie decide to jump out and run once you get past Port Angeles… no, that won't... wait..." and then she was out of range.

I wanted to kill her, kill Maria, rip her stone heart out of her chest, rip her head off. I wanted so desperately to get rid her and the others in the city it was like a physical pain in my chest, deep and aching. What she had done to Jasper, I didn't want to think too deeply about. Some of his faint thoughts of his past, the dark memories I had seen, started to make more sense.

The more clarity I gained, the angrier I became. She was there now and repeating those horrors, killing and destroying right next to everything I ever knew, and I could taste the rage on my tongue. It was terrifying and exhilarating, like this was what my new body and my new mind were designed to do, and I had just now found my purpose.

I kept running, gaining altitude, and then I was running up and around the glacier Emmett had shown me the week before. The fading sunlight reflecting off the ice would have been beautiful if I stopped to look, but I kept going, pushing harder and harder.

Every time I tried to think about maybe going back, every time I tried to focus on how foolish this was, the anger would snap back and push me faster, farther through the trees. I tried to think what I could do. I couldn't go and check on my family; I knew I couldn't risk that.

Maybe if I held my breath as soon as I hit the 101, then got in the water and swam through the Puget Sound, and when I surfaced try to catch one of their scents? In the back of my mind I knew that this was hopeless. There was no way this could end well, but the anger and fear drowned out every other thought that tried to surface.

I felt like a spring that had been wound tighter and tighter, and now all of the rage and loneliness and desperation that had been building since I had woken up in that bedroom two weeks ago was rocketing me forward.

I'd covered the mountain range and headed back down through the hemlocks; the rain forest was left behind, and the trees were different on the Eastern side of the park. I could see in the distance one of the service roads between the tall trees, and I realized that I was getting close to the end of the park.

The forest floor suddenly smoothed out, and I realized I was on a trail, the ground worn smooth by hundreds of hikers. With my peripheral vision there was a slight movement to my right, and unconsciously my newly agile body twisted and stopped on the trail, dust rising up around me.

This part of the trail was unusually straight and true, at least it would seem that way to human eyes. There was almost half a mile of the straight path before it curved completely out of view, and at the curve was a woman.

My eyes widened, and I was shocked, how could I have not heard her? _Smelled_ her? As soon as I started questioning, I realized that I was upwind and slightly elevated. I realized I was breathing shallowly, and I snapped my mouth shut. That was the first thing.

She hadn't noticed me yet, her eyes fixed down on the path as she trod forward. I wondered how good human eyesight was. I couldn't remember; would she be able to see me at half a mile? I realized too that although I could faintly hear her walking, I hadn't heard her mind yet.

Was this just a vampire thing? Could I even hear the thoughts of humans? I been so distracted (to put it mildly) when I almost attacked our elderly neighbor that I hadn't even tried to listen.

Then, as she slowly got closer, I realized I could faintly hear her. _Jack should have come along after all; this is a nice day. It's cooler in the woods that I had hoped. I wonder what's on TV tonight. Should I stop by the store on the way back? _Her thoughts were quiet, much more difficult to pick up than any of the Cullens'.

It was simpler, though, too, like the difference between looking at a Rothko and looking at some complex cubist painting. A faint memory of "Nude Descending Staircase" by Duchamp came to mind, supplied by my ever-helpful new vampire brain.

She was middle-aged and decked out in North Face. Her brown hair was pulled back into a tight ponytail, and her face was glistening slightly with sweat. A few more steps forward, and I realized I could start to hear more than the shuffling of her feet. I could hear her breathing, and I could faintly, very faintly, hear her heartbeat. I stiffened and dug my toes instinctively into the dirt.

I clenched my jaw and closed my eyes, willing my traitorous new body to hold still and not breathe. Don't breathe. Don't breathe. Don't listen... I heard a change in her breathing. I opened my eyes, and she was looking at me. Not quite meeting my gaze, but she was squinting in my direction.

I realized that in her mind I could see her vision of me, near the edge of the trail, still quite a ways off with her weak human vision. I was bizarre in her mind. _Vampire _didn't occur to her, but she knew that there was something freaky, alien, and just _off _about my frozen posture and pale skin, my bare feet and haphazard clothes.

_X-Files, weird..._ she thought. Seeing myself through her human eyes had broken my concentration, and I breathed in.

I tasted the air, and then a millisecond later I was there and tasting blood, and it was a thousand times better than any previous hunt, than Jasper's memories, than any faint recollection of sex or alcohol or drugs or anything else I could remember.

One heartbeat later, and my other senses started relaying back messages: the warmth of her skin through her light waterproof jacket as I clenched her body to mine, the feel of her soft, pliable body pressed against me, the smell of her hair and bugspray and her sweet sweat, the small hairs on her neck tickling my nose as I inhaled deeply.

I heard the frantically increasing heartbeats, getting faster and weaker with each lopsided pulse.

I swallowed and dug my teeth in deeper, almost choking on the rush of blood filling my mouth. I clinically noticed the sound of vertebrate breaking as I flexed my fingers as they rested on her back, and the sound of her humerus grinding into the clavicle and scapula as I twisted her arm with my left hand.

I pulled her body tighter to me and heard the wet suctioning pop of her left arm fully dislocating from the shoulder. I drew in another deep breath through my nose, and the smell was so overwhelming that I bit completely through the flesh, and my top and bottom teeth met. I spit out the tissue in my mouth and quickly turned back to her throat, suctioning my mouth against the now gaping hole.

I had gotten good with practice over the past few weeks hunting animals. I knew exactly where to bite so that I would sever the carotid, allowing the quickest flow of blood from the desperately pumping heart into my mouth as I instinctively swallowed again and again.

It took only seconds before the rush of blood slowed and I became cognizant of thoughts, fading and stuttering slowly in parallel with the slowing heartbeats. I thought of the Rothko painting again, the colors fading and bleeding together until all that was left was gray, and then nothing.

I stood a moment longer, my arms still crushing her body to my chest, and my mouth was still suctioned to her neck.

I opened my eyes, and instead of looking at the sweep of hair taking up most of my field of vision, I looked beyond it and down at the edge of the path, where the dirt met moss and leaves.

I dropped the body and stumbled back a few steps, never taking my eyes of that small square of ground.

"Edwaaaard! Edward! Wait! Wait! Don't!" I could hear Alice in the distance.

Her running footsteps were getting closer and closer, and although I could have moved I didn't, and I let her slam into me from the side, and we hit the ground with a dull thud.

"Oh! Oh..." Alice shifted her body and slid off my side, and looked over at the body crumpled next to us. Her hands rested on my shoulder and hip, and I lay passively on my side. Alice reached for my both my shoulders and rolled me up and over, turning me away from the corpse.

I was lying now across her lap, and as she clung to me I reached up and gripped her shoulders. I could feel her shaking beneath me as she took in sharp, sobbing breaths. I pulled back and looked at her, but her face was dry. Her eyes were wide, and her lip was shaking as she took in another shuddery breath.

"No tears," I said, my voice barely audible.

Alice searched my eyes, looking back and forth, as her breathing started to calm. "No, we can't." She leaned forward and rested her face against my shoulder. I could feel her cold breath against my skin as she said, "I'm sorry, Edward. I'm sorry."

I didn't say anything, but squeezed my arms tighter around her as I leaned my forehead against her soft mohair sweater, rubbing my face back and forth against the delicate fabric.

[1] "Shock, Hypovolemic," Paul Kolecki and Carl R Menckhoff. Sept. 14, 2009. eMedicine.

**A/N: Thank you again to Feisty for beta'ing for me! There would be horrible crimes against grammar here if it wasn't for her. And thanks of course to all of you who are reading!**


	7. Chapter 7

**Disclaimer: All characters, etc. are property of Stephanie Meyer.**

**

* * *

**Bruch's theory: [Is] premised on the idea that, "hunger awareness, and that of other biological needs, is not innate biological knowledge but that learning is necessary for them to become organized into recognizable patterns." Bruch also argued that "discriminating awareness of hunger itself is not present at birth and develops, accurately or distortedly, through reciprocal transactional feedback patterns of experience." A central component of Bruch's theory was that deficit in interoceptive awareness (IA) was a direct result of abnormal or deviant early experience with feeding and food intake. [1]

* * *

Alice and I sat on the path, unmoving, until Jasper, Rosalie, and Emmett found us. I couldn't see them; I kept my face buried in Alice's sweater, like a shy child hiding behind his mother's skirt. I couldn't stand the thought of looking at their faces, but their thoughts still wormed their way into my head.

_Man, really, don't worry. It happens. It's just one of those things. Don't feel bad. _

That was Emmett. Rosalie and Jasper's thoughts weren't as direct, but I could tell that they were trying to control their reactions. I wished someone would just say something out loud. We all were still for a few minutes, and the sounds of the woods around us filled in the silence. The smell of blood was still heavy in the air.

It startled me when Rosalie was the first to speak. "Emmett, come on. Let's go bury the body, okay?"

She and Emmett walked over and reached down to pick up the corpse. I jumped up and out of Alice's arms and walked several paces away when they drew near, turning my back on them and the scene on the ground. I just wanted to get out of there.

"Can we go now? Back to the house?" My voice was hoarse.

"Of course." Jasper said. He walked up to me and placed his hands on my shoulders. "Are you all right?" He searched my eyes, like Alice had earlier.

I couldn't begin to answer that question, and just stared at him. He squeezed my shoulders and said, "Okay, let's go back then."

We started running, and I attempted unsuccessfully to try and not think of what I leaving behind. I conscientiously kept my running slow; I didn't want to outrun Alice and Jasper as we retraced my path through the park.

As embarrassed and ashamed as I was in their presence, I was more afraid to be by myself. After a few minutes Alice reached out and grabbed my hand as we ran. I looked over at her, and she gave me a small smile. I felt Jasper's presence on my left, and his calm settled down over us like a heavy blanket. As we ran through the woods the small animals that we passed slowed their skittish movements, their usual reaction to our predatory presence dulled by the emotional force Jasper radiated.

By the time we returned to the house it was completely dark outside. The farmhouse was fully illuminated, each window a beacon of light, as if it was calling us home.

"Carlisle and Esme are here." Alice grinned as she pulled my hand harder.

"Wait!" I unintentionally yanked her back as I skid to a halt.

"What, Edward?" Jasper had lithely turned and stopped in front of us.

"I can't, I can't see them like this..." I gestured helplessly at my bloodstained clothes.

"Edward," Jasper said gently, "Carlisle has worked in emergency medicine for almost as long as I've existed. He's also trained newborns himself. Trust me; he will not be shocked or disgusted. And Esme, well... don't worry about it, okay?" Jasper smiled. For the first time since I had woken up to this strange new life, Jasper seemed fully relaxed.

"Come on," Alice said as she pulled me forward. We walked through the well-lit yard and up the back steps. As we entered the small kitchen I tried to block out the new thoughts that were permeating my mind; I didn't want to be so intrusive before I'd even met Esme and Carlisle in person.

As Jasper and Alice walked forward I held back a bit, taking the last place in the single-file line that moved through the narrow hallway. When we entered the living room I noticed it was warmly lit with almost a dozen of small accent lamps. It reminded me of my parents' house. This was the first time I'd seen anyone turn on a lamp, since darkness wasn't an issue for anyone living in the house.

Carlisle and Esme had been sitting close together on the couch, and they stood as we entered. Alice immediately went over to Esme and hugged her tightly as Jasper walked to Carlisle. The two men smiled at each other as they did the universal manly-half-hug thing, and Carlisle patted Jasper on the back.

I thought it was odd that this was one of the human traits that apparently translated over to vampire interactions. Jasper and Alice switched places, and I could see Jasper roll his eyes as Esme exclaimed, "Oh, honey!" as she pulled him into a hug.

"Are you holding up okay?" She continued, "I'm so sorry that it took so long for us to get back. I feel so bad about it!"

Alice looked guilty as she stood next to Carlisle, his arm around her shoulder. She looked back and forth between the couple as she said, "It's my fault, Esme. I'm so sorry to bring you home early, and that I've... disrupted everything."

For a moment no one spoke, but the room was not quiet, at least for me. I had frozen when we had entered the living room, the onslaught of the four vampire minds stopping me in my tracks. When it had been just Alice and Jasper, I could manage pretty well. It was more difficult with the addition of Rosalie and Emmett, and sometimes when all four had been in the same room with me it was almost debilitating.

The same thing was happening now with the addition of Esme and Carlisle, and before I could stop myself I was answering Carlisle's unspoken thoughts.

"No, you're right; it's not animal blood...." I said as Carlisle looked at my clothes. I felt the silence turn awkward, and my palms started to get itchy as I fought the urge to run while all four vampires stared at me. I dug my toes into the hardwood floor to keep still.

I looked down, but I couldn't help but see myself through the four pairs of eyes staring at me. I cringed as I saw that I was covered in dried blood, my hair was a god-awful mess, and my hands were clenched tightly into fists. I looked every bit of the monster that I was.

_Oh, Edward, please don't try to leave again. _Alice was having a brief vision of me running away, which we both watched as it flitted through her mind. _We're not angry it's happened – with the exception of Carlisle, we have ALL slipped. Please understand, it's okay. No one is upset with you. _Alice walked over as she directed her thoughts towards me. She reached down as she stood to my left and pulled one of my fists into her hands, smoothing away the tension there as she laced her fingers between mine.

"This is Edward," she said firmly.

Carlisle was the first to react, and he walked over to greet me formally. "Alice had mentioned your gift on the phone, but it's impressive to see in person. Welcome to the family, Edward."

As Carlisle shook my hand I took in his appearance. Physically, I knew he was around my age – twenty three. But there was no one who would guess that, human or vampire. His eyes betrayed his real age, and he had a quiet authority that was impossible not to notice. I could understand how even with his youth no one would question his presence as a doctor in an E.R.

Esme was quick to follow him, and hugged me gently. She reminded me of some 1940's actress... Vivien Leigh? No, the other one who was in _Gone with the Wind_, the sweet one. I couldn't remember her name.

"Welcome, Edward." She stepped back and slid her arm around Carlisle's waist. "I'm sorry for the circumstances, but we are very happy that you are here." She smiled. "I know this is an incredibly difficult time for you. We have all been through it, sweetheart, and we understand. Carlisle and I are here help in any way that we can. Usually..." she paused for a minute and looked at Carlisle.

I could tell she was hesitant to let me know how nervous they both were about the circumstances with the vampires in Seattle. I was not surprised to realize that with all of their phone conversations over the past two weeks Alice had not told them that the vampire was Maria.

"It's okay, Esme. I understand that this is not how you would normally, um... 'prevent such senseless killing'?" I said as I pulled the phrase from her mind.

"Oh!" Esme laughed lightly. "It's pointless, I see, to try and sugarcoat anything, isn't it? Well, yes, when Carlisle changed me, and then when Rosalie and Emmett joined the family, we pulled back from civilization for quite some time. And I want you to know, this is our fault, not yours, that you slipped up," Esme said adamantly, looking to the others for agreement. "Normally you would not even be in a position to run across a human for months, if not a full year."

"Yes," Carlisle added, frowning. "As Alice has told us, this is a delicate situation with whoever is in Seattle. Normally we don't often cross paths with nomadic vampires. We tend to leave each other alone. But this, whoever is doing this is being very reckless. To set newborns loose on a city is inviting trouble, and we would rather not have the Volutri here."

There was another pause. Again I wanted to know who these Volutri were. Unlike the time Alice mentioned them, Carlisle pictured vampires when he said the word. But I didn't say anything; I could tell that Jasper and Alice were both desperate to talk strategy with Carlisle and Esme.

Alice was also trying to figure out, without mentioning Maria, how to warn both them about the new developments from her earlier vision. They were all feeling a little awkward and reticent to jump right in with me standing there, still covered in blood.

"I'm going to go shower and change," I said as I walked around Carlisle and Esme. I glanced at Esme as I walked by and she smiled again. She now had blood on her silk blue top from where she had hugged me.

I walked up the stairs and down the long hallway. Although the house was sparsely furnished (Alice had told me that decorating was usually Esme's job when they moved into a new home) I could tell it had been updated; the paint was fresh and the floors level.

My grandparents had had a farmhouse like this, before my grandmother had died and my grandfather was put in a nursing home when I was twelve. But theirs was old and worn, paint peeling, smaller, and smelled like cigarette smoke and random farm smells I could never identify. When I was very little they had horses and a few other animals. I had faint memories of horseback riding with my mom, sitting in front of her in the saddle as she flew through the fields. It was her childhood home, and even as a preteen I knew how sad it was for her to sell the house and put Grandpa in a home.

It wasn't like this place, which had been remodeled within an inch of its life. I don't think the original floor plan included an attached bath for each bedroom. My room was the last on the left, and I closed the door behind me and stood for a moment in the middle of the room.

I saw my reflection in the mirror that was hung on the back of the door. I grimaced when I noticed again my bloodstained clothes, and I pulled off my shirt. I was getting better at controlling my strength—this time I only stretched out the neck instead of ripping the seams.

I had tried and avoided my reflection since I had woken up. I didn't look like myself anymore, and it was more than a little disconcerting. I hadn't really given much thought to my appearance before; I knew I was fairly attractive, I guess; girls seemed to like me. But that guy was gone, my ruddy cheeks, my green eyes that matched my mom's replaced with some alien version of me, pale and sharp angles and eyes that now matched Jasper's.

Well they _had_ matched; up until this evening they had been fading from vivid red, slowly mellowing out and getting closer and closer to the tawny ocher of Alice and Rosalie and Emmett. Now they were a dark red again. _Blood red,_ I thought humorlessly.

There was dried blood covering my neck and dripping down my chest, small trickles that had worked their way under my shirt and had dried halfway down. One lone streak trailed all the way to the waistband of the gray sweatpants I was wearing. I licked my fingers and wiped at the smudges of blood on my collarbone.

I mindlessly put my fingers back in my mouth before I realized my mistake. The dried blood on my fingers was only a pale reminder of what I had tasted earlier, but it did its job reignited the searing burn in my throat.

The thirst was like static in my mind, getting louder and louder until everything else was drowned out. My fears and my guilt, my fear and the smothering melancholy that seemed omnipresent over the past two weeks, all seemed to be overwhelmed by this one thing, this thirst that buzzed in my ears and filled my stomach with twisting need.

It wasn't like the thirst I had felt while hunting animals. It was like something new had been unleashed inside me, ignited by that first taste of human blood. It was overwhelming.

I realized that I could understand something now. I had wondered how the others, the vampires in the city, could kill over and over, even with the thirst driving them on. If they knew they could live off animals, why would they choose the horrific guilt and pain of killing people? But now, I could see – the thirst overpowered everything else. It took away the guilt and the shame. It became the only thing.

Suddenly my reflection moved as the door swung open. Jasper was standing in the doorframe, his eyebrows raised as he took in my appearance. "Are you okay? Alice sent me up; she was getting a little nervous about your future there for a minute."

I pulled my fingers from my mouth, embarrassed. I swallowed roughly. I didn't know quite what to say. _"Sorry, I was contemplating mass murder to cover up my guilt from killing that woman?"_ So I didn't say anything, and we stood staring at each other.

Jasper was thinking about how broken I had looked earlier, sitting in Alice's lap.

"Don't," I said. I didn't want his pity on top of everything else.

"I'm sorry," he said as he walked into my room.

"Why does it seem like that's the only thing you have to say to me?" I turned and walked to the dresser, carefully pulling open the top drawer and gently taking out a new t-shirt and yet another pair of sweatpants.

"You all keep apologizing over and over, like it's going to change anything. It doesn't help." I continued as turned back and walked around Jasper towards the bathroom. I was starting to calm down some, but I wasn't sure if it was just because the moment had passed, or because Jasper was there. I stopped once I entered the bathroom, and turned back to look at Jasper.

"I'm going to take a shower now. Is that okay?" I looked at him pointedly.

"Um..." Jasper scratched the back of his neck. It was such a human gesture, and it seemed out of character for him. I saw in his mind that Alice had told him to stay with me and to keep me calm for the rest of the night.

"Jesus. All right, but I'm shutting the bathroom door, okay?" I said sarcastically.

I closed the door and turned on the shower, letting hot steam fill the room. Over the sound of the water I could hear Jasper turn and sit down with his back against the bathroom door.

I stripped off the rest of my bloody clothes and stepped into the shower. I let the hot water run over my head and rinse the blood off my torso. I watched the pink water swirl around the drain. The smell of blood was still rich in the air, and I could taste on my tongue, minuscule particles of the plasma suspended in the steam.

"How do you do it?" I asked quietly, trying to stay focused and not let the thirst overtake me again.

"How do I do what?" Jasper replied.

"I've never... I've never felt like that. When I tasted that dried blood... I've never wanted anything more in my life. It's like, I don't know. Like I hadn't really felt thirsty, really, before I killed that woman. How can you go back to animal blood after that?"

Jasper was quiet for a long time. He was sifting through memories in his mind. It took me a minute to realize that he wasn't going to answer me out loud, that this was his response. I saw memories of how pleasurable it was to kill, before he met Alice.

Some of these were memories I recognized from the previous week, memories of blood and sex and violence all tied together into one overwhelming dark pleasure. I realized now that Maria was in a lot of these; I hadn't recognized her before.

As his memories progressed through time there was a different feel to them; they were less about pleasure and more about necessity. They were less drawn out; there was no more extended chases or games. And then Maria was gone from his memories, and he focused on the victims pleading for their lives, and him apologizing before he snapped their necks or crushed their windpipes.

He went through long periods of hunger, and wandering alone through woods and fields and forests. I realized that this must have been after he left Maria. I wondered how many years he wandered alone before he met Alice.

As if Jasper could read my mind, all of a sudden she was there in his thoughts. The look on Alice's face under the florescence lights of some diner was almost euphoric, and Jasper remembered being drawn to her so intently that it was almost dark to remember that there was a time before she was there.

He remembered Alice with her light eyes bright and shining, laughing as she showed him how to hunt deer in a forest. He remembered thinking about how the animal blood wasn't the same, how it wasn't as filling, but it left his mind clearer.

He thought about slowly, over time, starting to feel deserving of Alice, how he rediscovered his love of reading and learning. He remembered how he felt like he was finding himself again, slowly, piece by piece, finding parts of his dormant humanity.

By the time his thoughts started to become less focused I realized that the shower had run out of hot water, not that the cold felt any less comfortable to my newly resilient skin. I turned off the water and reached for a towel.

I wanted to say something sarcastic, something about how I wasn't lucky enough to have some beautiful girl seek me out and save me, but I held my tongue. I realized that Jasper didn't have to do all of that, let me so deeply into his mind.

I had to keep reminding myself that as angry as I felt, my frustration with the lack of any real privacy from Alice or Jasper, I was the interloper here. I had free reign over their thoughts and I had completely disrupting their lives, and none of them had any obligation to stay and help me. I pulled on the clean t-shirt and sweatpants, and I heard Jasper stand up before I opened the door.

"Want to play chess?" he asked as he walked back into the center of the room.

"Um, sure, I guess. Where is everyone else?" I realized that I could no longer hear Carlisle or Esme or Alice in my mind, and the house was quiet as well.

"They went hunting, I think. Rosalie and Emmett probably won't be back for awhile, either. I think they miss the privacy they had in Alaska." Jasper walked over to one of the two white bookshelves in the room and pulled down a chessboard I hadn't even realized was there.

There wasn't much in my room, just the clothes that Alice had bought me (every pair of sweatpants and t-shirt that Old Navy stocked, I had joked with her earlier), some books and my laptop from my apartment.

Jasper set the chessboard on the middle of the hardwood floor and started setting up the pieces.

"You know how to play, right?"

"Of course. But it's been a long while."

"Well, Emmett and I play a lot, so I'm pretty decent, but you may have the advantage." Jasper looked up and me and smiled as he tapped the side of his head.

"Oh, yeah. Well, hell, in that case, if you all are ever short of cash, lemme know, and I'll run down to Vegas. I hadn't thought about that yet." I laughed as I sat down cross-legged across from him and helped him set up the board. A few minutes into the game, and I was struggling.

Jasper was good, and I hadn't played since I was fourteen. Without the mind-reading I would have lost hopelessly. We were down to a few pieces each, when I thought I figured out a way to get his queen in check. Suddenly, I seriously doubted that move. Was I missing something? Could Jasper retaliate with his rook before I got my bishop into position? I looked up, and Jasper was smirking at me.

"What?" I asked, confused. His grin widened as I was plunged deeper into doubt.

"Hey – not fair! That's not cool." I smiled back as I caught on to what he was doing. "No one must want to play with you if you cheat like that."

"Me? What about you? Man, I can't wait to see you play Alice – you'll see her moves, but she'll predict yours. That'll be interesting, I'm sure."

"Huh. Yeah, that would be fun." I smiled at him again, more genuinely this time. As we continued the game I started to think about all of them – Jasper and Alice, Rosalie and Emmett, and now Carlisle and Esme. I'd spent so much of the past two weeks mourning my parents and my former life, worrying about what we would do with the vampires in Seattle, and trying to figure out so many things about my new body and mind, but I hadn't really given that much thought to the fact that I would be with these people for a long time. Maybe even forever.

These bizarre, freakishly smart but not quite human people would be my new family, and I realized as I looked at Jasper over the chessboard that it could be worse, much worse. They were kind, and interesting, and took full advantage of their lives, even though they were vampires.

By the time dawn broke Jasper and I had played two dozen games, testing our skills against each other. I told Jasper more about my former plans for med school and my job from the summer. He encouraged me to talk to Carlisle, and that maybe medicine could one day be an option for me again, if I wanted it.

As the early morning sun lightened up the room, I felt calm, and not just from Jasper's influence. The fear and pain and sadness were still constants, weighed down in my psyche from what had happened the night before. But I wasn't alone, and I had help. Maybe things would be okay, after all.

[1] Christopher Harshaw, Alimentary epigenetics: A developmental psychobiological systems view of the perception of hunger, thirst and satiety, Developmental Review, Volume 28, Issue 4, December 2008, Pages 541-569, ISSN 0273-2297, DOI: 10..2008.08.001. (.com/science/article/B6WDH-4TK7XDB-1/2/)

**Author's Note:**

**Again, thanks so much to Feisty for beta'ing this, and for the shout-out in the latest chapter of Fix You. I am beyond flattered!**


	8. Chapter 8

**Disclaimer: All characters, etc. are property of Stephanie Meyer.**

* * *

Eidetic memory: Eidetic [photographic] imagery has been defined as the memory capability to retain an accurate, detailed image of a complex scene or pattern. It is known to be present in a relatively high percentage of normal children, and then the ability declines with age. [1]

* * *

I missed sleeping.

More specifically, I missed dreaming. I had always had very vivid dreams, bizarre action/adventure fantasies where my family and friends flitted in and out of the storyline and every place triggered a sense of déjà vu even if I couldn't recognize it. Most mornings I would hit the snooze button four or five times, and I would fall back into a restless sleep in nine-minute increments, serializing my dreams like a weekly drama on TV. If I was close enough to consciousness I could manipulate my dreams, like a choose-your-own-adventure book. I hated that even the small things I had enjoyed in my life were gone.

So instead I tried to meditate, and I tried for a few nights lying on the bed in my room, closing my eyes and running through different mantras in my mind. It was almost ludicrous, I knew, to try and clear my mind when it was now the size of an airplane hanger and I had the thoughts of six other vampires echoing off its roomy walls.

Alice was particularly intrigued by this, and one night she joined me, lying on the floor a few feet away from my useless bed.

"So what do I think about again?" Alice asked.

"Um, I'm not sure how well this translates for vampires. Before, I would concentrate on my breathing, umm... you know, thinking about the air coming in, letting my stomach expand, and visualizing my diaphragm contract when I exhale? I dunno, it's weird to try and explain it. I always got too technical when I meditated before; I started thinking about my alveoli and stuff."

"Hmmm."

"Oh, I remember something else. One of my yoga teachers used to say that when an errant thought enters your head, you address it like it's printed on a piece of paper, then visualize letting the piece of paper go and watch it drift to the floor."

Alice was quiet, and I could see that in her head she was organizing her thoughts on different colored pieces of paper. As she visualized them falling to the floor, they started to make up an abstract mosaic, similar colors falling next to each other until a rainbow appeared, like one of those collages made up of hundreds of different photographs. Meditation really wasn't the same with vampire minds.

"That's neat. You were really into yoga and 'new age' things? How very modern of you." She asked a lot of questions about my human life. I thought about what Emmett had mentioned about Alice last week; I wondered if sometimes she did think of me as an experimental sample to study.

"Well, I am a twenty-something liberal vegetarian living in Seattle. My mom's a therapist, and I went to a Montessori preschool. It's not that surprising."

We were quiet for another minute.

"Was," I corrected.

"What?" Alice asked.

"I _was_ a twenty-something liberal vegetarian. Now I'm a just depressed killer who can't even protect my family or friends."

"Oh, Edward. Please don't be melodramatic. It doesn't suit you." I opened one eye and looked over at Alice on the floor. She was lying there, her fingers interlaced over her stomach and her ankles crossed. She was wearing some odd getup with a fluffy skirt and knee-high boots that looked vaguely Victorian. Her eyes were closed, but she was grinning. I guess the fact that she was teasing me was a good sign. A good sign of what, I wasn't sure.

The past few days, ever since "_the incident_," had been exhausting. I would start to feel a little better, focusing on reading and hunting (animals again, as unappetizing as they were), and helping the others plan on what to do with the vampires in the city, and then it would hit me again. Someone was dead. Because of me.

It was like I could tread water for a while, but then the weight of my guilt and shame would pull me under again and again, and most of the time I felt like I was drowning.

Alice and I were both quiet for the next few hours. I could see in her mind the mosaic becoming more and more complex as paper copies of her thoughts floated down again and again. She was visualizing her visions as small flat-screen monitors, images flashing by as they fluttering down to the ground. She was good; she had much more focus than me. Of course, she wasn't trying to keep out the thoughts of everyone in the house. After a while I gave up on trying to clear my mind. Instead, I started in on my latest little mental project.

I was trying to remember everything that I could about my human life. It wasn't until I had talked to Carlisle a few days ago that I found out that, unlike any of my new vampire memories, my human life would fade quickly unless I tried purposefully to memorize events, people, and places from before. Like hell I was going to forget everything.

I had my life, my body, my mind ripped away and replaced with this new alien existence, and now I was going to lose my entire past as well? Who would I even be anymore? So now, when I had some time to myself, I would try to remember everything I could of my life in reverse chronological order.

I'd start with this summer, my job and my apartment and hanging out with my friends and co-workers. The past four years of college. My trip to Europe after my sophomore year. High school and trips with my parents up and down the coast: San Francisco, Banff, Vancouver, Napa Valley. Middle school, elementary school, summers at my grandparents' farm. It wasn't easy; it was like an image downloading on a website back when the Internet was new and everyone had dial-up: it was blocky and out of focus.

But each time I ran back through the last twenty-three years I could fill in more and more. I now remembered the names of all of my teachers in high school and middle school. I tried to focus the most on my family: my parents, my aunt, my grandparents.

Every time I started out, I ran over the week leading up to Jasper's night in the morgue, and I thought of my date with Bella. I played those details over and over in my mind. I thought of everything we talked about: her job, my application to med school, books and movies we liked, favorite foods, favorite restaurants. I thought about the beer I drank, the music in the background, and the playful banter between Angela and Ben. I thought about walking Bella out to the parking lot and how soft her hair felt when I touched it. Her eyes were bright and shining under the harsh yellow streetlights.

The regret I felt for not kissing her that night was sharp and surprisingly intense. I didn't know if it was because it would have been my last real contact with a person, or because it was her. I almost hoped it wasn't because it was Bella; I couldn't stand the thought of what I may have lost.

"Jesus Christ, Edward, what are you thinking about? This room just reeks of angst." Jasper stood in the doorway, looking amused at Alice and I lay out in parallel with our eyes closed.

I sat up looked at the clock by the bedside table. No one else really got why I wanted it, but it didn't feel like a bedroom without it. It was 3:47 a.m.

I looked back at Jasper. I guess it was a good sign that he could joke with me, too.

"What's up?" I asked, trying to deflect his question. Alice remained on the floor, her thoughts still neatly floating onto her visualized floor, but they were now all saying "Jasper," "Jasper," "Jasper."

"Emmett and I were thinking about taking a little trip, get out of the house for a day. Want to come?"

"Um, sure." What else was there for me to do?

I stood, stepped over the still form of Alice on the floor, and walked down the stairs. Jasper stayed behind and started talking quietly to Alice.

Carlisle and Esme were sitting at the dining room table, their heads bent together as they looked at the laptop. They hadn't decided if we would stay in Seattle,waiting to see how things played out with the nomadic vampires there.

They had told me yesterday that they'd only had to leave once before because of another vampire. I made sure not to mention that Alice had already told me that, and that the cause of that abrupt departure was the same as our current problem: Maria.

Since things were up in the air, they were planning out the potential move to be on the safe side. It seemed the consensus was leaning towards Quebec.

Rosalie was sitting on the couch in the living room, Emmett on the floor at her feet. She was engrossed in some tome on electrical engineering, and Emmett was snickering at the TV, watching "Mythbusters."

"Emmett, if you come up with another God-awful bet with Jasper based off of that stupid Discovery channel I will not be held accountable for my actions." Rosalie said dryly, not looking up from the bible-thin pages.

"What bet?" I asked. In both Emmett's and Rosalie's minds were the results of the previous bet, but I wanted to hear Emmett's explanation out loud. This would be funny; from across the room I could see Esme roll her eyes and Carlisle smile.

"Well, you know that show, 'Deadliest Catch'? With the crab fishermen in Alaska?" Emmett looked at me and grinned.

"Yeah, I remember it," I answered.

"Well, two years ago, Jasper and I made a bet to see who would come out with the highest crab count at the end of the next season. And I made sure I won that bet."

"How?" I humored him.

"So, animals are scared of us, right? Well, apparently, that includes crustaceans. I just made sure the crabs were under the boats I had picked to win."

"Seriously? You walked around on the bottom of the Bering Sea, herding crabs?"

"For two weeks," Rosalie deadpanned, her eyebrow raised as she looked up at me from her textbook.

"You're kind of weird, you know that?" I laughed at Emmett.

"Dude: infinite amount of time on my hands. Why not, right?" Emmett cracked his knuckles. I smiled. I was always happy when I noticed some human trait that carried over properly with vampire physiology.

"Why not?" I echoed.

"You should have seen him after Carlisle got him the 'Planet Earth' DVD series. He was dragging me all over the world for a year. He wanted to see every location for himself." Rosalie's voice sounded annoyed, but she was looking at the back of Emmett's head affectionately.

Jasper finally wandered downstairs. "Ready to go?"

"Um, sure, let me get some shoes..." This would be the first time I would vaguely be out in public; I hadn't had the need to be properly dressed since I woke up. Alice bounded down the stairs a second later, a pair of flip-flops extended in her hand.

"They are disgustingly... ugh, I don't even know the right word for how inappropriate these are for, well, any occasion, really. But you can put them on yourself." She made a face as she handed them over.

"Alice, I've managed not to break my laptop or the piano so far; I think I could handle shoes with laces." Alice just smiled and shook the flip-flops at me.

"Okay. Whatever." I answered as I took them from her and slipped them on.

Jasper and Emmett both said goodbye to their – what, spouses? Significant others? Life-partners? Whatever the proper vampire term was. After saying goodbye to Carlisle and Esme as well, I asked as the three of us walked out of the house,

"Are you all married?"

"What, you mean Rosalie and I, and Jasper and Alice? Yeah, Rose wants a big fancy wedding once a decade or so, but you and Alice have been married only once, right Jasper?"

Jasper nodded in agreement, then turned to me. "So, which car?"

I looked out at the driveway. There were four cars that I recognized lined up on the gravel driveway – a dark sedan (Carlisle's, I remembered; it was what Jasper, Emmett and Rosalie had used to try and drive into the city), an over-sized Jeep, and two little shiny sports cars, one yellow and one cherry red.

At the end of the line was a car I didn't recognize, a silver car, larger than the little sports cars, but smaller than the black sedan.

"Whose is that?" I asked, pointing.

"It's yours, man!" Emmett said as he tossed a set of keys at me and I instinctively caught them.

"You bought me a car?"

"It's Rosalie's and my way of saying welcome to the family," Emmett said as he walked to the driver's side and opened the door, motioning for me to get in.

"Wait a second," I said. "I need a minute to process all this." Three days ago, I had killed someone. And now, I was getting a new car, like some vampire consolation prize. It was hard not to feel like Alice these days— down-the-rabbit-hole Alice, not prophetic-with-weird-boots Alice.

"Okay. Thanks, that's really nice of you," I said, and went and sat down in the driver's seat. It smelled weird, all chemicals and plastic, and I wrinkled my nose in disgust.

Jasper got into the passenger seat, and Emmett took his place in the backseat, leaning up between us.

"I know it's not too sexy or anything, but we had Alice check out your reaction, and you liked this the best."

"It must be hard to surprise anyone with Alice around, huh?" I ran my hands up and down the steering wheel. I had to admit, having never owned a car before, this was kind of cool.

"Well, now with you too, man. You know how hard it was for me not to think about this?"

"I hate to break it to you, but Alice had mentioned something the other week about getting me a car."

"Oh, yeah, she canceled the order on the Vanquish when she saw what your reaction would be. She's pretty bummed that you don't really get into the whole car thing. It wasn't until I decided to get you something that she saw you liking a car."

I liked Alice. I really did. She was funny, and sweet, and smart, and I could see us becoming good friends. For some reason, though, the way she operated with her visions scared the shit out of me.

I didn't respond to Emmett and instead looked over the dashboard of the car. It was a Volvo, but it wasn't at all like the station wagon my parents had had when I was a kid. It had been a while since I'd driven a car (I'd found that having one at school while living in the city was more of a pain in the ass than anything else), and I wondered how this would go with my new reflexes and strength.

Slowly letting out a deep breath, I put the key in the ignition and carefully turned it over. The engine purred to life, and after a few false starts, we were heading down the 101.

I didn't know why I had been nervous. A paltry sixty-five miles an hour on the highway wasn't anywhere close to my running speed, I realized. This was easy and relaxing, and I started to enjoy the feel of the car as I followed the curving road, the headlights illuminating the dark woods.

"Where am I going?" I asked.

Jasper and Emmett were both quiet, and I could tell that they were content. Emmett was thinking of previous road trips that he and Jasper had taken, racing cars in the middle of the night over long stretches of open highway – in the Midwest, from the looks of it.

Jasper was relieved to have a break from all of the planning and worrying over the vampires in Seattle. He was thinking about how he didn't miss the military planning and strategizing from his past.

"Wherever you want, as long as it's not a highly populated area. If you keep the windows up and the vents off, we should be good, even if we pass other cars and people," Jasper answered. "If you want, you can just stick to the highway and we can go down the coast."

"Okay," I answered.

After an hour the sun started to rise, diluting the deep, rich, velvety blue of the sky into a duller gray, pale violets and pinks barely visible through the top of the trees. Jasper had to keep reminding me to keep my speed under seventy, not that he thought I would lose control of the car, he said, but because we didn't want to draw the attention of any state troopers that may be out in the early morning.

We continued on through small towns, and occasionally we could see the Pacific off on our right.

"What?" Jasper asked suddenly.

I looked at him, surprised. I had been contemplating how to ask him a question for the awhile, and I didn't know how he knew that.

"Don't be surprised," Jasper continued. "After reading emotions for so long, it's easy for me to pick up on the nuances. I could tell from your emotions that you want something, but you're hesitating and nervous, and I could tell you want to ask me a question."

I looked up in the rearview mirror at Emmett, who was stretched out across the backseat, as much as his large frame would allow. He was half listening to our conversation but mostly thinking about the next trip he and Rosalie were planning and what he might do if we decided to go to Quebec.

I cleared my throat.

"Well, I was wondering... did you get picked up by the cop on purpose? The night in the morgue? I was thinking about it. I mean, I do have an advantage I guess, with the whole mind-reading thing, but even without that, how did the cop get to you in that park? What happened?"

Jasper mentioning the state troopers a few minutes ago had reminded me of the night this had all started. Now that I knew how hard it was to surprise a vampire, it didn't make sense to me that a cop had found him in that park and had mistaken him for a dead body.

"I was just upwind of the police officer and wasn't paying attention. It wasn't the first time something like this had happened, right, Emmett?"

"Oh, yeah, remember that time we had to get Esme out of the county morgue? When was it, 1974, I think? We were in upstate New York, and she was lying out in the snow, in like shorts and some thin shirt, totally inappropriate for a human considering the weather, and this hunter walked up, and..."

As I listened to Emmett's story I also focused in on Jasper's thoughts. He wasn't lying, not really, he had been upwind of the cop. But there was more to it. He had felt off, like the city had triggered something in him that night. Something that really upset him, that he couldn't completely place.

He prided himself on being alert and vigilant. He along with Alice were the sentries of the family. They felt out the temperament of a community and saw what would happen, making sure that no one grew too suspicious of them as they tried to blend in with the human population.

He was unsure of himself now that he had been caught. He knew something had been distracting him that night, but he wasn't sure what it was.

"Do you think it was the other vampires?" I asked, interrupting Emmett.

I cringed after I realized what I had done; I was really trying to learn and not answer the others' thoughts. I hated that I still couldn't control myself, that I was so intrusive towards everyone around me. Thank god I didn't actually mention Maria by name.

"What?" Emmett asked, sitting up in his seat.

I saw a small parking lot off of the highway and pulled over. I realized that it was a lot for a public beach, which was deserted this time of morning. The sky was hazy, and in the distance a few seagulls flew overhead.

"I didn't smell any vampires that night, Edward. That would have not slipped by me, no matter how distracted I was." Jasper looked away from us, out towards the water.

"Wait, what?" Emmett looked back and forth between us.

"Sorry, Emmett," I said. "Jasper was, um, distracted that night." I looked over at Jasper's profile, wondering if it was okay to tell Emmett.

It was bad enough that Jasper had no privacy from me in his own mind, but I shouldn't broadcast his thoughts against his will, even if it was just Emmett.

Jasper could obviously pick up on my conflicted feelings. He looked over at me and sighed.

"Most places have what I guess I could call, hmm... an emotional flavor? Cities, neighborhoods, wherever there are people."

He opened up the car door and started walking out towards the beach. I turned off the engine, and both Emmett and I walked out to join him. The sunlight was getting brighter and slowly warming up the sky.

The sea was calm and smooth, and even with my vampire eyesight I could barely make out the line of the horizon; the colors of the water and the sky were so similar.

Jasper toed off his shoes and waded out a few feet into the surf. "That night, the city felt off, emotionally. It was almost like I could feel, I don't know, fear? Maybe? In the air... it was like... it almost reminded me of my past."

It was almost physically painful for me to keep my mouth shut; I wanted to tell him he was right, that it was his past. I needed to talk to Alice when we got back. I hated keeping secrets, and I didn't want to be the barrier between Jasper and Alice anymore. Jasper was so troubled by this, and I wanted to help.

"I was lying there in that park, trying to figure out why I felt so off, not breathing, obviously, when the cop found me. And then the rest of the night..." Jasper drifted off, and he was replaying what he had done to me in his mind.

His bad mood settled over the three of us, and we all stared dejectedly out over the surf.

Emmett shifted back and forth on the sand uncomfortably. "Well, I for one am happy that Edward's here," Emmett interjected. "We don't need to dwell on this. I mean, we were supposed to get out of the house to get away from all of the doom and gloom, right? There's no point in rehashing this over and over. We just have to make the best of the situation."

I smiled gratefully at Emmett and noticed that the sunlight was starting to filter through the clouds. Emmett's face was shimmering in the light, and I shook my head. On Alice and Esme and Rosalie, it was pretty. On us guys it was just weird.

"We should head back, if the sun's going to be out today." I said.

Emmett reached out and patted Jasper on the shoulder.

"It's cool, man," he said as he picked up Jasper's shoes for him. "Either we'll take care of the nomads and settle into life here, or head on to Quebec, which I think would be really cool, _d'accord_?"

We got back into the Volvo, and I carefully started driving back the way we came. Emmett started listing out all of the possible things we could do if we moved, and the extra steps the family usually had to take when they moved out of the country.

I asked them about the other places they had lived, and Emmett and Jasper started in a number of stories about various small towns across northern America and Canada, and more exotic locations like Norway and Russia. Jasper's mood began to improve; I began to felt the calm that usually accompanied him permeate the interior of the car.

I found that I really enjoyed driving, and decided to take the car out more often. I'd have to thank Rosalie also when we got back. Although she had been helpful after they had found me in the woods that day, we still were a little tentative around each other. This was a nice gesture, even if Emmett had been the instigator.

We had just driven through Forks and were only about fifteen miles from the house when I saw an old, rusted pickup truck in the southbound lane. We had already passed a few cars on the road coming back, but just as promised with windows up and the dark tint on the glass, the drivers were safe from my bloodlust and we were safe from the incriminating sunlight.

I didn't feel nervous about this one, but I did slow down again to get my speed back to a "reasonable" seventy-two, which still felt painfully slow.

As we approached the truck I saw it slow down then pull off onto the shoulder of the highway. It looked vaguely familiar.

From this distance all I could tell was that it was a girl driving the truck, and she was alone. As we sped by the parked vehicle, I glanced over at the driver. For a split second we made eye contact, and I realized why I knew this truck.

It was Bella.

[1]Working memory of numerals in chimpanzees _Current Biology_, Volume 17, Issue 23, Pages R1004-R1005 S. Inoue, T. Matsuzawa

**Author's Note: A belated Merry Christmas to those that celebrate! I've emerged from a vicodin haze to post this. Luckily, I'd written this chapter before my tonsillectomy last week. I don't know when I'll post next, if you see a chapter that makes absolutely no sense then you know I've been writing while under the influence of narcotics. Thanks for reading, and happy new year!**


	9. Chapter 9

Epigenetics: The development and maintenance of an organism is orchestrated by a set of chemical reactions that switch parts of the genome off and on at strategic times and locations. Epigenetics is the study of these reactions and the factors that influence them. [1]

* * *

Bella.

It took me half a second to react, and at that point I was almost a quarter mile past Bella's parked truck. I saw a dirt road ahead and yanked the wheel hard to the left, and with the wheels skidding along the pavement we veered off onto the side road. I slammed on the brakes, and the car shuddered to a stop, the dust rising in a cloud around us. Jasper's hands had pressed a few inches into the dashboard.

"What the fuck, Edward?" Jasper looked at me in disbelief.

"Oh, shit, Edward, I think I cracked the windshield back here..." Emmett mumbled from the backseat as he sat up.

"I... I don't know." I wracked my brain, trying to think of something to say.

I heard another car driving south on the highway, and looking in my rearview mirror I saw a sedan driving by. I could hear the thoughts of the driver, an older guy, and although I had to strain as he got farther away I could see Bella's truck through his mind's eye. She was still parked on the side of the road, and she looked small sitting in the driver's seat. I realized that although I could still faintly hear the thoughts of the man in the car, I couldn't hear her at all.

"Shut up! Shh! " I hissed at Jasper as he opened his mouth to speak.

I closed my eyes, trying to concentrate harder. Why couldn't I hear her? She had to still be there; I'd seen her only seconds before, and the man driving by confirmed it. Was she okay? Was she conscious? There was no way I could get out and check. I wasn't sure I wouldn't be able to smell her from this distance, and there was no way I was going to chance it.

"What the hell?" Jasper shook my shoulder, and I reluctantly opened my eyes and looked over at him.

He was angrier than I had ever seen him. Emmett's head had popped up between the two front seats, and he didn't seem too pleased either.

"I..." I wanted to lie, but I couldn't. "I know her. I knew her. Bella, that girl in the truck back there. I think she saw me."

There was a long silence in the car as Emmett and Jasper tried to figure out what to say. Emmett was sympathetic, because he thought he knew what Jasper would want to do. I realized with horror that he knew exactly what Jasper was thinking; I could hear it myself. Jasper wanted to take her out. He didn't want to risk our secrecy.

"No. Jasper, no. I won't let that happen. I won't let you hurt her." The words were out of my mouth before I even realized I was talking.

There wasn't a question in my mind; if Jasper wanted to hurt Bella I would have to stop him. My whole body was tense. I was like a live wire, and I realized that this could go downhill very fast. I didn't want to get out of the car—I could put Bella at risk. Could I fight Jasper while resisting her? I kept both of my hands on the steering wheel and could hear the plastic start to crack as I gripped it tighter.

"Jasper, you can't hurt her. I don't know if she even recognized me." My voice was shaky, betraying emotions that I was sure Jasper was well aware of already.

"Jasper, he's right," Emmett interjected as he realized that he was right in his assumption. "We can't risk anything right now, with all that's going on. Edward can listen in, right? And hear in her mind if she recognized him?"

Jasper shook his head, as if trying to clear it. I could tell that he wanted to call Alice, get her advice, but he also didn't want to burden her with another one of his problems. He was angry with me and trying desperately to hold that anger in check. He was tired of dealing with me, and he hated how I dredged up all of his old painful memories he tried so hard to get rid of. He didn't want the responsibility. He was tired. But on top of all of that he was still rational; he didn't want to unleash his rage onto a volatile newborn, and he was trying to focus in on the practical side of his military training. I wanted to take advantage of that rationality.

"Emmett's right, Jasper," I tried to placate him. "I can listen in; she's still pulled over on the side of the road. Let's just... let's just try to stay calm and not act rashly, okay? We need to know everything before anyone acts." I almost smiled at how weird that sounded coming from me, the "volatile newborn."

Jasper took a deep breath and looked at me. He knew I was listening in, and I could tell just how tired he was of trying to control his thoughts around me. He was torn between wanting to just walk away from me and the whole situation, and ripping my head off. It was the first time his thoughts had been so uncontrolled around me, and I was surprised at just how much violence must be lurking under the surface.

"Please, Jasper, just give me a few minutes," I asked quietly.

He didn't respond out loud, but he nodded in agreement, and his thoughts were distinct enough to let me know that if she had any idea of what she had seen, things would not go well for Bella. Jasper made it clear that to me there would not be anything else that might threaten Alice's safety, damn the consequences.

"Okay. Okay," I said as I took a deep breath and closed my eyes again.

I tried to concentrate in on the area of Bella's truck, only a couple hundred yards away. If I still couldn't hear her mind I would be screwed. I had no doubt that I would be unable to control my emotions if I tried to lie to Jasper about Bella's thoughts; he would pick up on it right away. I was sure I was already saturating the car with my anxiety and doubt and fear. Emmett and Jasper's thoughts quieted down a little.I could tune them out to some degree and listened as hard as I could. I could hear small animals in the woods off of the 101. I could hear cars further up and down the highway, and I could even hear the quiet noises of the engine of Bella's truck as it cooled off.

But her mind, it was like a vacuum; there was nothing there. Had she passed out or something? I couldn't make sense of it.

I was getting more and more nervous when a small miracle occurred; I heard a cell phone ring faintly in the distance. It must have been coming from Bella's truck. Since I was already focusing all of my attention on her, I could hear quiet shuffling and then her voice, my god, her sweet voice, answer the phone.

"Hello?" she said thickly, as if she had a cold. I tilted my ear slightly to the left, as if the few extra inches would allow me to hear her better. I couldn't make out the voice on the other end; my vampire hearing was not _that _good, but I could hear Bella's voice clearly. I could tell Jasper and Emmett were listening just as intently, and I heard Bella's side of the conversation in triplicate, echoing in the minds of the two of them nanoseconds after Bella spoke.

"Hi, Mom."

Bella's voice was such a relief to hear. It was almost as though I had imagined my whole life before I was changed; sometimes I doubted I had ever been anything but a part of this new surreal existence. But this, this was proof that my old life was real, that the people I loved were still there.

"No, it's not too early," Bella continued after a minute. "I was actually driving home for the weekend. I couldn't sleep, so I decided to get an early start."

"No, yeah, I got it. Thanks for the package, that was really sweet of you." There was another short pause in the conversation.

"No, you don't have to come up. That would be silly, all the way from Florida just for a weekend? I'll be fine."

"I... I don't know, Mom, you're right, I'm not doing so good." She hiccupped, and I wondered if she really had a cold or if it was something else.

"No, really, seeing Dad will help. It'll help calm his nerves, all of the murders in the big city and all… no, no. I'm not going to come stay with you and Phil. Look, it's not like Jacksonville is any safer than Seattle. I'm going to be okay. I can't leave my job anyway." There was a longer pause, and now I was certain she was crying.

I raked my hand over my face. This was unbearable. I couldn't stand to be here, listening in alongside Jasper and Emmett; it was worse than when I was a mental peeping tom with Jasper and Alice. It was worse than my mindreading; this was unforgivable. We had to go. I started to reach for the key in the ignition when Bella started talking again.

"Mom? I don't know what to do. This isn't normal, I know. Can you believe I thought I saw him? Driving down the road? I had pulled over because... yeah, you're right, I was crying again. I can't seem to control it. And then this car drove by, and I thought he was driving, but that's just ridiculous." I could hear her inhaling in short, shaky breaths.

"I see him... I see him all the time. We went on one date, three weeks ago, and now I can't sleep, I can't eat; I don't know what's wrong with me, Mom." There was a long pause again, with Bella occasionally interjecting "uh huhs" and "yeahs" through hiccups and her uneven breathing.

"No, you're right, you're right. I'm sure it's just the stress of everything. Yeah, I do think your therapist is right; I'm projecting my fear about all of the murders and everything else onto the death of this boy I barely knew. Yeah, I know."

Oh god. She was talking about me. She was crying about _me._

"Heard enough?" I said harshly. "She doesn't really think she saw me. We're okay to go."

I turned the ignition and looked in the rearview mirror as I put the car in reverse. Jasper started to say something, and I looked over at him sharply.

"Just don't, okay? She didn't really see me. We're safe. I'm leaving." Jasper leaned back in his seat. He was a mess of thoughts, but was willing to let us leave. I looked up and down the highway and backed onto the northbound lane, speeding off before we could hear any more of Bella's conversation. Luckily I had pulled off far enough in front of Bella's truck that she wouldn't see the Volvo.

I was dreading the fifteen-minute ride back to the house. It was bad enough that I had to try and think about what I had just heard, but hearing Jasper and Emmett dissect it in their minds as well would be excruciating.

Emmett was sympathetic as usual, and I had to give him credit—he really wasn't that bad to have to listen in on. I had to give Jasper credit, though, too. He was feeling remorseful for his earlier thoughts, although he was a little resentful that he had thought he had to apologize.

"It's okay, Jasper," I sighed. I knew rationally I couldn't be mad at someone for their thoughts; it was ludicrous to try and blame someone for what flitted through their mind. And really, he was right. They had all explained to me in one form or another that there was only one vampire rule, strictly enforced: Do not be seen; do not be discovered. Stay a secret. Jasper was right in wanting to make sure we followed the one thing that apparently could be punished by death.

"No, it's not," Jasper spoke out loud. "I shouldn't be so impatient with you. Just because we have a lot going on right now, it's not an excuse to expect more from you than any other newborn. I'm sorry you saw that girl, Edward."

I realized that what Jasper hated most was feeling out of control, having all of these uncontrollable situations thrown at him again and again. It reminded him of his time with Maria, who used chaos to keep him unsteady and uncertain.

"Jasper, it's all right. Nothing happened; we don't even have to tell anyone about it for all I care," I responded.

We were getting closer to the house, and for the first time I was really glad to be going home. Being with everyone else would help take my mind off of what had just happened. I sighed again as I looked in the rearview mirror. Emmett was intentionally avoiding my gaze. He was uncomfortable with what had happened and didn't know what to say. He was remembering how quickly the Cullens had moved to Canada after his transformation, taking him thousands of miles from his human family and friends in Tennessee. He couldn't imagine staying so close to them after the change.

He didn't remember much from his human years, but remembered warmth, and laughter, and a large number of siblings, and a sweetheart, a young, petite brunette he took walks with. He had never told Rosalie about her, and he rarely thought of her, but he was thinking now that she was like my Bella.

"My" Bella. How ridiculous was that? Maybe whatever her mother said on the phone during that overheard conversation was right. We were both projecting all of our fear and confusion over what had happened to us into mourning something that wasn't even real, something that could never come to fruition. We had known each other for a handful of hours. Despite whatever "new age" tendencies were in my upbringing, above all else I wanted to be a scientist, a doctor, and that meant reason. I didn't believe in "love at first sight."

Bella was a symbol, I told myself, of what I had lost, my human life. But there was a small part of me, a part that I was ashamed of, that was glad that she was upset. She had liked me. Enough to cry. Enough to be upset, unable to sleep and driving at some god-awful hour of the morning, pulled over on the side of the road, unable to continue because of her grief. It shouldn't have made me feel good, and it didn't, really. But somehow, it gave me a small sense of hope, one I couldn't and didn't want to make sense of.

The rest of the family was still scattered around the house when we returned. Alice walked out onto the front porch when we got out of the car, and smiled sympathetically at me when we walked up the steps.

"You saw all that, then?" I asked. She nodded and directed her thoughts at me.

_I'm sorry about that, Edward. I could have called to warn you all, but I thought it might do you good to see her. You liked her a lot, didn't you?_ I nodded as I went and sat beside her on the porch swing in the warm morning light. It was still early enough that the sounds of all of the night insects could faintly be heard, fading off in the woods. Jasper stepped over and kissed Alice on the head and told her he was going inside to read.

I could hear in Emmett's thoughts that he was anxious to get Rosalie out into the woods, under the guise of hunting. It was awkward living under the same roof with three apparently very amorous couples when I could read their minds. They were all polite enough to head off to the forest when they wanted to have sex, but I knew from their thoughts that there was a reason each couple had a bedroom in a house where no one slept, and they weren't used to passing the nights reading and working of various projects.

"Do you want to talk about it?" Alice broke me out of my reverie.

"No." I answered. "I don't know. I don't know what to think, really. I guess I'm glad, in a way? That people miss me? But I don't want to cause anyone any more pain."

Alice hummed in agreement, choosing to address me with her thoughts rather than out loud.

_Edward, there is so much I regret because I don't have any human memories. Emmett always teases me about taking on humanity as a research project, and I guess it's true in some ways. I know it must hurt so much, but I really envy you. You remember so much, and although it must be terribly painful to stay so close to your human life, it will help you in the long run. It will make you better, make it easier for you. You know what Shakespeare said, _

"'It is better to have loved and lost than never to have lost at all'?" I interrupted, laughing. "I doubt what he had in mind was "it's better to have had one date with a pretty girl before abruptly being turned into a vampire than to have never had the date at all.'"

I shook my head. "I don't think Shakespeare can help me much here, Alice." Alice smiled and leaned her head against my shoulder.

_Yeah, I guess you're right. But seriously, Edward, people loved you, and you get to remember that. It __is__ a good thing, although it may not feel like it now. Why don't you go upstairs and talk to Carlisle in his office? He's got some questions for you about what you want to do if we move._

"Um, okay," I said as I stood up from the seat. Honestly, I was a little intimidated by Carlisle. We hadn't had much time alone to talk, and although he had been nothing but kind to me, he was like a particularly intense college professor who I knew I should go see during office hours, but could never get up the courage to go. His experience and intelligence made me feel so ridiculously young.

I walked into the house and said hi to Esme, who was still sitting at that computer in the dining room where we had left her many hours ago. I walked up the old wooden stairs, stopping at the top. Carlisle's door was the first on the right. Did I knock? He must have heard me on the stairs.

_Come in, Edward. I'd asked Alice to send you up when you had the chance._ Well, that answered that. I pushed the door open and looked inside.

The whole "Carlisle-as-professor" thing wasn't helped by his office, with its floor-to-ceiling bookshelves stacked haphazardly with hundreds of hardcover volumes, and an oversized wooden desk taking up much of the room. The desk covered with papers, some stacks at tall as the computer monitor perched on one corner. I wondered if he were a packrat, but I realized that he was over three hundred years old. Stuff must build up over time.

_Have a seat, Edward,_ Carlisle thought, and gestured to the worn leather chair that faced the desk. I picked up the two medical textbooks that were on the seat, and looked around.

_Just put them on the floor. Esme is always after me to clean up my office; she can't believe I just lug this mess from house to house, but I have my own method of organization. _ Carlisle smiled as I placed the books at my feet and gingerly sat on the chair. _Do you prefer me to speak out loud?_

"Um, yeah, actually, if that's okay with you," I said as I looked around the room. Despite being a little intimidating, the office also felt warm and lived in, even though Carlisle and Esme had been in the house less than a week.

"I have to admit, studying vampire physiology is a bit a hobby of mine, and I am very intrigued by your gift. Alice says that you can read human minds as well? Have you tested your range?" Carlisle asked as he leaned back in his chair and propped his feet on the desk.

"Yeah, I can. Um, human minds are a little different, I guess? It's not just that they are simpler than vampire minds, which I think is true, but I also think I don't pick them up quite as strongly? I think, I mean I haven't really spent any time in any close proximity to anyone yet. Really, the closest I got were the people in the passing cars on our drive last night. I think my range is about a mile for vampires, and less for people, like maybe a little less than half a mile."

"That's really fascinating. After things have calmed down I would like to test a few things out, try to figure out more about it. And of course, try to help you find ways to deal with it. Like Alice, it must be almost as much of a burden as a gift." Carlisle smiled at me. In some ways he reminded me of Emmett; his thoughts were so similar to what he said. It was calming.

"I do want to apologize again that we haven't really gotten a chance to sit down properly and talk yet." Carlisle continued. It was true; he had mentioned a few helpful things here and there, interjecting into my conversations with Jasper, but his attention was almost fully devoted to the immediate future of the Cullens and the impending confrontation with whoever was in Seattle.

"We haven't fully given you the attention we should—_I_ should—be giving you. You can ask me anything, you know. Jasper has had more experience than I have with newborns, but I do have to say that I have a little more experience with our lifestyle in particular. Do you have any questions? Is there anything you need help with?"

"Um, you said that, well, Alice was telling me that you wanted to help plan out what I would do when we moved to Quebec. So is that finalized now?"

"Yes, we think so. We'll meet together as a family later today, but no matter how things turn out with the others in Seattle, we would want to move anyhow to give you a fresh start. It's cruel to make you stay here with your old life so close by." Carlisle frowned, and his thoughts turned towards memories of the others he had changed, Rosalie and Emmett in particular, who had family still living when they were turned. He was grateful that Esme had been all but alone in the world when he found her in the morgue. I wasn't quite as upset as he was about the fact that we were still in Washington State. If we had left already, I wouldn't have been able to see Bella again. As painful as it had been, I couldn't start to quantify how much that brief glance between us had meant to me.

To distract himself, Carlisle asked me what I might like to do once I got past my first year and was able to rejoin the world in public. I started thinking out loud, brainstorming ways to try and still study medicine even though I knew I wouldn't be able to stand to be around that much blood.

"Maybe a PhD, first?" Carlisle suggested. "Get a good solid background in the theory, see what's going on in biochemistry or genetics. You can still help people without actually practicing hands-on medicine, if that's your motivating factor. Oh, that would be great! I keep trying to get Rosalie to try out biomedical engineering, but she's firmly entrenched in the mechanical and mathematical end of things. Alice and Esme are much more interested in the more social sciences. It will be nice to have someone to properly bounce ideas off of!"

"Oh, I don't know about that," I stammered. Jesus, here I was with my lousy bachelor's in biology and Carlisle thought he'd found the Watson to his Crick. "I don't really know anything."

Carlisle laughed in response. "I don't care what you know. That will take care of itself. I care about what you're interested in. Are you familiar with the theory of epigenetics?" God, the first question Carlisle asked me, and I didn't even have a clue. I shook my head.

"Sorry."

"It's all right! Don't apologize. Do you want to hear about my theory? Of course, if you're not interested, you don't have to humor me. The others don't, believe me." Carlisle laughed again and sat up, looking around his desk. "Where is it... oh yes, here! Read this article; let me know what you think. What's going at, where, oh yes, McGill University, their research with maternal instincts in rats, and then also read this, there's some interesting research going on in Sweden with large-scale epidemiological studies..."

"Can I read them here?" I asked.

I actually was starting to enjoy sitting in Carlisle's study. It reminded me a bit of my mother's office; her textbooks and journals were always spread out all over. She always kept a few _National Geographics_ in her office when I was a kid, something with pictures to keep me occupied while she did her work.

"Of course! Let me know if you have any questions. See, I think that the idea of epigentics can be applied to vampirism! These genes are always there, but they are switched on during the change. I never understood how a fully developed creature could be mutated so fully through just the injection of venom."

"Huh," I said. I did enjoy my genetics classes, and I tried to remember what I had learned about genetic mutation.

I flipped open the first article and started reading. It was interesting, talking about the effect of switching mother rats on genetically different infants, and how it affected the development of the rats. Carlisle wandered around the room, pulling down random books and journals. We fell into an easy back and forth, my asking questions, his answering or pulling out more things for me to read, or both. He started talking about maybe even setting up a lab in the house in Quebec, since I wouldn't be able to attend school for a while. I was so entrenched in a paper describing a study about twins and autism that I was actually startled when I heard Jasper knock on the door.

"Edward?" Jasper poked his head through the door. "We were going to go hunt, Alice and I, and maybe Esme. Did you all want to come?"

I looked back and forth between Jasper and Carlisle, who was still frowning at his laptop. I had stumped him with a question about RNA interference, and he was cursing the fact that his searches on PubMed were limited by his current lack of a hospital affiliation. "Um... I guess? What time is it?"

Jasper shrugged. The whole family was amused by my interest in always knowing the time. They didn't really seem to care, since none of them currently had the need to keep up with any human pretenses. I glanced over again at Carlisle, who looked down at the corner of his monitor.

"Hmmm, eight thirty?" he replied absentmindedly.

"What?" I asked and looked out the window. It was dark outside. "Have we really been up here for over twelve hours?"

"I guess so." Jasper grinned at me. He was happy that I had found something to keep me occupied, and was soaking in the joy emanating from Carlisle. Apparently Carlisle had been complaining for a while about a lack of anyone else's interest in biology or medicine, and he knew that Alice was to some degree just humoring him by registering for med school in the fall.

Carlisle looked up at the two of us when he realized we were both looking at him.

"Thank you, Jasper, for bringing Edward to us. I know that this was a choice he didn't want, but I am so glad that he's here." He grinned at me. "You go on; I'm going to keep looking for that one publication I mentioned. I can't believe I don't have a hard copy!"

I got up and followed Jasper out the back door, where Alice and Esme were waiting for us. Alice walked up to me.

"Esme and I were just talking about how wonderful it is for Carlisle to have someone to talk with. He just loves his research so much, and to be honest it's not really a passion for the rest of us."

Esme nodded in agreement. "I overheard you all talk about the idea of a lab—the house I've picked out in Quebec has an unfinished basement, which would be perfect to convert. I thought at first it might be hard to fit a proper hood into the space, but then I realized, of course you aren't going to be worried about fumes!" Esme laughed. "Wait until you see the floor plan; you'll get the top level all to yourself!"

"Esme..." Alice whined. "I wanted that for my studio!"

"Alice! Remember, there is that space above the detached garage. It has better light anyhow."

Jasper and I followed the two girls out into the woods. It was another clear night, and the warm summer breeze felt good. From the back, Esme's petite form reminded me a bit of Bella. I had forgotten about what had happened early this morning. Well, as much as I could forget with my new brain; it was always there, nagging me, like my guilt about the woman I killed, and my fear for my family. There was no way now for me to forget anything completely. But being with Carlisle had helped, a lot. I had felt useful for a few hours.

I took a deep breath as I started to run along with the others. I would have to put Bella out of my mind. What could I do? If I tried to see her, I would kill her. She would be sad for a few weeks, maybe a month, but we would take care of the problem in Seattle and then slip away from this part of the world. She would forget me, and I would have to focus on trying to find happiness here, with my research with Carlisle, and chess with Jasper, and playing the piano, and goofing around with Emmett.

This morning then was my swan song, I decided, my last contact with who I was before I embarked off into my new life.

[1]http://learn[.]genetics[.]utah[.]edu/content/epigenetics/

**AN: Thank you again to Feisty for her amazing beta skills! And thank you to all who are reading and reviewing - it's amazing how exciting it is to get review notifications in my inbox - they make my day!**


	10. Chapter 10

Corticotropin-releasing hormone: A 41-amino acid peptide derived from a 191-amino acid preprohormone. CRH is secreted by the paraventricular nucleus (PVN) of the hypothalamus in response to stress[1]. Research has demonstrated that CRH is a key chemical involved in dealing with the sudden loss or long-term separation of a partner, it is the chemical that is released during periods of grief[2].

* * *

The next week fell into an uneasy rhythm. The rest of the Cullens continued preparing for the move to Quebec and tentatively laying out plans for dealing with the vampires in the city. Alice remained tight-lipped about her visions, letting the others know only that it "wasn't time to move yet" and that there would be serious repercussions if anyone tried to get close to the city.

She told the family that the nomads knew we were nearby and were waiting to ambush us as they grew in numbers, as she kept seeing different newborn vampires in her visions. However, from what I could tell, her visions were not that clear or straightforward. She seemed to be playing up the risk, exaggerating and even lying about what she saw.

It amazed me how much the others trusted her visions and didn't question her decision to wait; I could tell everyone was deeply bothered by the body count that continued to rise. It was infuriating. I kept trying to get Alice alone; if she was going to continue to keep my family at risk at the very least I wanted an explanation.

Alice seemed to sense this from me, and she was good at making sure we were never alone together, despite my best attempts. It was pretty easy for her, as the family was staying close to the house. Tensions were high, and no one except maybe Esme seemed fully at ease with staying confined to the house and the woods surrounding it. Even Carlisle seemed perturbed and uneasy, which frightened me.

Occasionally one of the couples ventured out as far as Forks or Port Angeles on cloudy days, but for the most part everyone stayed nearby. We were stepping all over each other, and I tried my best to stay out of everyone's way.

I hunted often, which my newborn thirst still demanded, and spent most of the rest of my time with Carlisle. He was fine with letting Esme, Rosalie and Emmett do most of the detailed planning for the move, handling the forging of online identities to allow us access to job and school applications. Apparently Jasper usually handled the paper documents and was working on updating everyone's Canadian passports.

Staying busy also helped me try to ignore the constant fear and worry in the back of my mind, although I wasn't too successful. My amazing newborn mind: it had the capacity to understand and analyze complex biological theories with Carlisle yet still be almost paralyzed with fear (from a vengeful and potentially crazed Maria knowing where my family and friends were), guilt (over the woman I had killed), grief (for the loss of my family, friends, my whole life), and the weird, haunting combination of emotions I couldn't name (trying to process the overheard phone conversation between Bella and her mother).

The constant pain of emotion was like a twin to my unquenchable thirst, always present, despite my best efforts to push it out of my mind.

Jasper couldn't help but pick up on all this, and tried his best to try to keep the emotional climate in the house manageable. He kept telling me that simply being a neophyte was the cause of a lot of it; the recent changes in my body were something akin to the flood of hormones that teenagers experience.

I had foolishly thought that seeing Bella, overhearing her conversation would somehow help give me closure. As the days passed, the opposite seemed to be occurring. I was thinking of her more and more. Was she still grieving? Scared of the murders in the city? Was she still with her father in Forks, or had she gone back to the city? Was she thinking of me?

My morose and almost obsessive thoughts came to a head one day, when I finally broke down and decided to look at the comments that people had posted on the newspaper website's online obituary . I needed to know if Bella had written anything.

I was too cowardly to look myself, and so I sought out Esme, who I found trying to tame the rose bushes in the side garden. The others were surprised that I had turned down their offer to go hunting earlier that afternoon, but I didn't want an audience for this, and I doubted I would get Esme alone again for a while.

When I found her I stammered out some lame explanation about what I wanted her to do, then handed her my laptop and sat down on the grass. "

Oh, sweetheart," Esme murmured after I finished my explanation, "all right, if you're sure."

She sank down onto the lawn next to me, and in her sweet, lilting voice she read comment after comment from friends, cousins, acquaintances from school and work and high school.

I lay down on my side, my eyes level with the long strands of grass. _I'm tiny. _I thought. _I'm no bigger than a blade of grass. My whole world is here, these stripes of blue sky between green grass the entire universe._

I closed my eyes when I heard Esme read Bella's name. God, what would she write? Would she lay out her feelings for everyone to see? I suddenly wished that she hadn't written anything at all; I wanted her grief to be a private thing.

"I had known Edward Masen only for a short while, but in that time I learned what I'm sure you all know: he was kind and generous, funny and self-deprecating, what anyone could hope for in a friend. I wish I could have gotten to know him better." Esme sighed and placed her hand on my shoulder for a moment before going on and reading the next message.

The next one was from my eighth grade science teacher. I remembered Mrs. Cope; she was the one that got me onto the AP bio track for high school. I had emailed her when I got my acceptance to med school.

I opened my eyes again and looked out through the blades of grass. I wish I could shrink down to nothing, a dust mote, and float away in the breeze.

It took another half an hour for Esme to get through them all. I didn't move when she finished, and after a moment she closed the laptop and lay down next to me, facing my back. She didn't say anything, but placed her left hand on my shoulder. We stayed like that until I heard the others running back towards the house. I got up and walked inside, unable to look at Esme.

* * *

Three days later I was finally able to catch Alice alone. She had joined me and Rosalie to go hunting, and the three of us had separated fairly quickly. Our rampant hunting over limited ground in the past few weeks was starting to become noticeable, and prey was getting harder and harder to find. A few days after the incident with the woman, Jasper and Emmett had taken me out for hours, showing me which areas of the park were the most remote, and how to avoid any potential hiking trails. I felt a little more comfortable being on my own and actually appreciated not having an audience when I took down an elk or a deer.

I was stalking what I thought may have been a bobcat when I heard someone approaching on my left. As soon as I realized from her thoughts that it was Alice, I changed course and cut her off right before she crossed the Hoh River.

"Hey, stop for a minute, please?" I knew better than to try to accost her. I thought I would have more luck being nice.

Alice stopped nimbly when I spoke and turned to look at me. She looked exhausted and a little weary.

"Please, Edward, I know you know I'm keeping things from you and the rest of the family. This is difficult for both of us, but you have to understand that I have no choice. I don't want to do this, but I don't have any other options at this point."

"Why? I'm not judging you, Alice; I don't think that you're a bad person. But if I'm going to stay quiet, you have to explain this to me. I don't want my family to be at risk without even knowing why." Alice crouched down and ran her hands through the undergrowth along the riverbank. The sunlight was filtering through the leaf canopy overhead, and the resulting patchwork of glittering skin on Alice's body was like something out of a Tim Burton movie.

I slowly walked toward her, and when I got within a few yards I sat as well, resting my bare feet in the river. The water passing over them felt ... complex; there was no other way to describe it. Each little ripple and current was like a separate liquid rope passing over my skin. The water felt almost gritty from all the thousands of microscopic plants and animals floating and swimming by. I was so distracted for a minute I almost forgot that Alice was there.

I shook my head to clear it, and looked over to Alice.

"Please, tell me why we're waiting. Is there something that Maria is going to do? Some event?" I waited for a second, but Alice didn't move to answer me. Her mind was impassive as well, and I tried again."I have to admit though, I'm impressed at how well you can hide things from me. None of the others are nearly as good, although Jasper tries very hard."

Alice smiled. "Jasper's a very private person. I guess it's karma, that after so many years of reading people's emotions, seeing their deepest feelings laid bare, that he finally knows what it's like to feel exposed."

"I don't mean to. It's almost harder than the bloodlust, in some ways. At least I have the promise of that subsiding. Maybe it will get easier for me over time. I don't want to be so intrusive all of the time. I know Rosalie hates it."

"Rosalie hates a lot of stuff. Don't take it personally."

"I know; I've been told that a few times over the past few weeks." I smiled at her, hoping that she would bring up Maria on her own.

We sat in silence for a few minutes, letting the sounds of the forest fill up the space around us. Alice was thinking about the situation in Seattle, replaying some visions that I had previously seen. She suddenly started speaking.

"Edward, this may sound cruel, but I have one goal: to keep Jasper safe. He is more important to me than anything or anyone else. I don't want to have to make any sacrifices, but I will if it means protecting Jasper." Alice paused for a minute, and I saw a brief flash of a vision that I hadn't seen before. She must have had it out of my presence. It was Seattle at night, but it was so indistinct I couldn't make out exactly where it was taking place.

"What you asked me the other week? If this is like a chess game for me? In a way, it is. I've tried out so many options, Edward... I..."

As we sat on the sun-speckled riverbank she showed me visions I hadn't seen before. I couldn't believe that she was able to hold these back from me. They were visions of Jasper running through the streets of Seattle, chasing someone or being chased—it was hard to tell. They grew progressively more violent, the visions shifting from ones of just Jasper, to Jasper and Maria, Jasper and the newborn vampires, Jasper and Alice and Maria, almost every conceivable combination of the Cullens and Maria and her vampires. They all either ended abruptly or with the ripping of limbs, purple smoke and haze and death.

I realized now why she was holding back from me, why I thought the visions she was having didn't fit the dire predictions she told the others. She must have thought, probably correctly, that I wouldn't have been able to conceal my reaction to a vision like that in front of the others.

"What..." I cleared my throat. I had trouble voicing my question. "What are the ones that go blank?"

"I think those are the ones where I die early on." Alice looked at me impassively.

I tentatively reached my hand out, as if to touch her, but she was too far away.

"Don't pity me, Edward. Although it's rare, this is not the first time I've had a vision where something like that happens. Usually I'm so grateful that I'm able to prevent... but this, this is just so..." Alice broke off, and gazed into the river.

"Yeah," I added uselessly.

We sat a while more, watching a small mole on the other side of the bank sniff around, oblivious to the two vicious predators only yards away. I thought of the fish that swam under sharks for protection, too small to be of interest to the shark. I snorted at the thought of the small creatures using us as protection from hawks and wolves and cougars.

Alice quirked her eyebrow at me.

"Nothing," I said. I waited a minute, then added "Why is Maria doing this? How did she find you?"

"I'm not sure," Alice answered, frowning. "We've run into her a few times before, and although it hadn't gone well, we certainly weren't in mortal peril. And how? Well, Jasper keeps up with a few old friends; she could have contacted them. The vampire world _is_ relatively small, although it's not like we have a Facebook group or anything." She grinned at me.

I smiled back at her, then another thought entered my head, and my smile faltered.

"Alice?"

"Yes?"

"Why can't you just tell everyone else what you've told me? Why haven't you told them about Maria?"

"Jasper... Jasper feels guilt and obligation and a million other complicated things about Maria. If he found out, he would go and try to reason with her. He would feel responsible. I can't risk it, Edward. I can't risk putting him at harm, even if it means lying to him."

"Fair enough," I responded. I sat in silence until Alice started to get impatient and wanted to get up and continue hunting. I had put off my last question as long as I could, terrified of the answer.

"Alice ... I ... I need to know. In those visions, the ones you've been..." I tried to think of the best way to put it. "The ones you had when I wasn't around. Have you seen any with ... with anyone I know?" I pushed my fingers through my hair nervously.

"Edward..." Alice said softly. "I haven't seen anything, I promise you. I am so sorry. So, so sorry for putting your family at risk. You know, you must see that I can't stand it either, seeing more and more people die, because of Maria, and because of me."

"I know," I whispered, looking at the ground. I had all of this power, this strength and speed and heightened senses and fucking mind-reading, and I had never felt so helpless in my life. Alice sensed my mood and stood, walked over, and crouched down next to me.

"Edward, it was a good question you asked, about how Maria found us. I think if I try to get in touch with some of Jasper's old friends, they may have some information. The more I know, the faster I'll figure something out, and the faster we can act. Okay?"

"Okay."

"I'll need your help, though, to keep Jasper from finding out. Can you help me?" Alice asked earnestly. I looked over at her. She still looked so tired. I hadn't noticed it before today, and I realized that she must be a very good actress. The visions would have made it a necessity early on in her life, I guessed.

"Okay," I repeated and stood, Alice unfolding her petite frame and standing beside me. We looked out over the woods.

"Want to finish hunting?" Alice smiled in response and leaped gracefully over the river, landing only a few feet from the mole, which was still burrowing around in the dirt. I followed her lead and leaped across the glittering water.

* * *

It took a few days, but I was eventually able to help Alice by getting Jasper and Emmett to go hunting with me when Carlisle, Esme, and Rosalie had ventured down to Portland to try to finish up a few loose ends with the house in Quebec. Jasper wouldn't let Alice leave the house by herself, fearing for her safety, and going into the woods by herself didn't work because of the lack of cell phone reception.

When we returned, Alice had a smile for Jasper and was quick to direct her thoughts to me.

_Thank you, Edward. I was able to talk a few of Jasper's old friends. They hadn't heard anything, but I left a message for Peter and Charlotte. They were Jasper's oldest friends and were actually created by Maria as well. I think if I hear back from them we will be able to make some progress. _

Ever since Alice and I had talked in the forest, she was more open around me, letting me see the types of visions that she had been hiding before. Anytime someone thought seriously about moving ahead and trying to make a move toward the city, we would both be hit with murky visions of fighting and fire and the most hideous sounds of screeching metal, grinding and scraping. I had never heard anything like it before and prayed that I never would outside of Alice's mind.

* * *

It was a week after our initial conversation about her visions, and Alice was getting nervous that she had not heard back from Peter and Charlotte yet. We had silent conversations, hidden from the rest of the family, when we could; no one noticed Alice reading over my shoulder while I was typing up notes for Carlisle on my laptop (I was also practicing how not to punch holes through the computer), and answering my written questions in her mind.

With all of the worry and tension constantly in my mind and permeating the mood of the house, practicing "vampire things" was another good distraction for me. I was getting better, but I still didn't have full control of my strength or speed. I would work on controlling my strength by using my laptop and playing the piano some, although I was still terrified of breaking the ridiculously expensive instrument.

Most of the time I would encourage Rosalie to play instead, partly as a peace offering, but also because she was freakishly good. It was amazing to listen to her, another contradiction, watching her cold disposition unchanging as she coaxed the most beautiful and gentle melodies from the Bösendorfer.

Emmett and Jasper would help in other ways, teaching me to feel out my strength and learn what was "human" friendly. I would press against Emmett's palms until he told me what was the right pressure for touching someone's shoulder, or shaking their hand, or pushing them. Apparently there was a fine line between an acceptable amount of pressure, and what would punch a hole through someone's spine.

I hated it, although it was good practice, because I had first-hand knowledge of how much pressure it would take to break human bones. It wasn't much.

They also decided to teach me to fight, although they knew I wouldn't be able to join them in their eventual confrontation in the city. Although my strength would be helpful, my bloodlust in a city of half a million would not be a good idea. Not to mention I had no idea how I would react to the exposure to that many minds in close proximity.

We were practicing one morning on the front lawn. It was misting, and the ground was damp, which presented me with some problems. It was the weirdest thing to begin to slip in the wet grass, but be able to catch and right myself as I fell, landing in bizarre gymnastic positions.

I stopped after a while and watched Jasper and Emmett demonstrate the best ways to get out of a choke hold. The mist picked up into a light but steady rain, and I realized that the air outside was cooler. It wasn't uncomfortable, but it was noticeably different than it had been a few weeks ago. I realized that we now must be halfway through September. I had now missed the first two weeks of medical school.

I took in a deep, steadying breath to try to center myself. I was getting a little better at heading off those morose and depressing lines of thought. That wasn't me anymore, and there was no use in wallowing over a future that would never happen. A car turning onto the driveway a mile out helped distract me.

"I think I hear the car. The girls must be back." Rosalie, Esme and Alice had taken a short trip to Port Angeles to shop. Alice was a little more assured that trips to nearby towns were safe, since the trip to Portland had gone well.

Jasper and Emmett straightened up, and we watched the little yellow Porsche speed down the gravel drive and slide gracefully into the spot between Rosalie's and Carlisle's cars. Rosalie got out, and Emmett jogged over to greet her as Jasper walked over to the driver's door. He opened it and helped Alice out. She smiled and asked him to get a few bags out of the trunk.

_Edward, something is wrong. I tried to call Peter and Charlotte again when Rosalie left me for a while when we were in town, and their phone has been disconnected. I've contacted one of our other friends, Eleazer, who is traveling through California to to and stop in to visit them. I have a bad feeling about this._

She was good, I had to admit; she never faltered in her conversation with Jasper as she directed these thoughts at me. I trailed behind the two couples as they walked into the house.

"I'm going to work on something in my room," I said out loud, feeling stupid. I hope I didn't sound too suspicious. I wasn't really good at the whole subterfuge thing; it was mentally exhausting.

I walked upstairs and sat down at my laptop, opening the latest Word document that I had started, notes from some old back issues of _Nature_. I started typing, and listened to Alice tell Jasper that she had to run out to the car to get something she forgot. She flitted into my room a minute later.

"Edward, would you want to go hunting with us later?"

"Sure," I replied, my typing slowing down but not stopping.

**What do you mean, you have a bad feeling? Who is Eleazer? **I typed.

_Eleazer is one of our friends in Alaska, the ones we were staying with before we came to Washington. The other "vegetarians." Eleazer went down to San Francisco after we left, and last I heard Peter and Charlotte were just north of the city, living along the coast. He should be able to stop in and see what's going on. I've asked him to keep it a secret. I told him that I wanted to invite them to visit as a surprise for Jasper. We should be good._

**What are you afraid of?**

_I don't know. I just feel uneasy about it._

"Okay, I'll let you know when we're going to leave," Alice said aloud and it took me a minute to realize she was talking about the hunting walked out of the room and headed down the stairs.

I sat for a minute, unmoving, then quickly highlighted and erased the last two typed lines. I looked down at the open journal on the floor next to the laptop; I might as well keep up the pretense a little longer and actually get something productive done for Carlisle.

The next day I was sitting in Carlisle's office, reading a textbook about cytogenetics, when I heard Alice's mental voice, shrill and scared, calling my name. She had been out in the backyard reading, while the others were scattered around the house, working on various projects.

A second later, the phone rang. Jasper was downstairs in the living room, and would be the closest to it. I immediately stood and started down the stairs. When I reached the living room Alice was at the back door, her face absolutely terrified. We could hear Jasper answer, and the whole house could easily hear the voice on the other end of the phone.

"_Jasper? It's Eleazer. Alice asked me to stop by and check on Peter and Charlotte. I know it was supposed to be a surprise, but I have terrible news, and I couldn't wait to tell you. When I got to their house, there were ashes, and I could still smell smoke in the air. I'm so sorry. I'm afraid your friends are dead."_

Alice and I looked at each other, unable to move when Jasper dropped the receiver.

[1]http://en[.]wikipedia[.]org/wiki/Corticotropin-releasing_hormone

[2]http://www[.]pchrd[.]dost[.]gov[.]/news-archive/1365

**A/N:**

**Ooh, look, two citations for the price of one! Big thanks to Feisty, without her help this would be a big old mess of bad grammar. And thank you to everyone that is reviewing! Also, for those that are interested, I think this story will be a total of about 15 chapters, give or take, so we're about two-thirds through. **

**Thanks for reading!  
**


	11. Chapter 11

Hereditary sensory and autonomic neuropathy (HSAN) Type 4, Congenital insensitivity to pain with anhidrosis: An autosomal recessive condition. Affected infants present with episodes of hyperthermia unrelated to environmental temperature, anhidrosis and insensitivity to pain. Palmar skin is thickened and charcot joints are commonly present. NCV shows motor and sensory nerve action potentials to be normal. The histopathology of peripheral nerve biopsy reveals absent small unmyelinated fibers and mitochondria are abnormally enlarged. [1]

* * *

"I'm sorry," Alice whispered from her spot in the doorway, looking at Jasper. "I'm so, so sorry."

Jasper's back was to me, but I could see his fist clenching and unclenching. His thoughts were so jumbled, and he was broadcasting them so loudly I put my hands over my ears, a useless vestige of my old human mannerisms.

I started walking backwards, slowly, as the other Cullens entered the living room from their various places throughout the house. As they got closer their mental voices grew louder and louder, helped along by the anger escalating through the house, projected uncontrollably from Jasper.

I bumped into the front door, and the noise made Alice look over.

_I'm sorry_, I mouthed and reached behind me for the doorknob.

I stumbled out onto the front porch and made my way to the edge of the woods. I thought that after the past few weeks I had acclimated to the thoughts of all six of the Cullens at once, but this was overwhelming.

I stood there for a moment. Even the small distance helped, and I could almost manage all of the voices shouting in my head. I should go back in and help defend Alice, I thought. Instead I turned and ran into the woods.

About a mile in I slowed, then finally stopped when I reached a small clearing. I sat down in the damp undergrowth, and thought about what heard.

Jasper had pictured a couple, both blond and vampires, standing in a ravine at night. The landscape was barren, the dust and rocks spotted with short, scrubby trees. The man was yelling at the woman to leave. They both seemed terrified of something – Jasper, I realized. As soon as the woman turned and ran off the man joined her, disappearing quickly over the ridge of the small canyon.

It must have been Peter and Charlotte. The landscape looked like they were in Mexico. If they had been created by Maria, why were they so scared of Jasper? I wished I knew more: about them, about Maria, and about Jasper and his life back then.

I closed my eyes in concentration as I started to try and untangle the rest of what I'd heard in Jasper's mind. I recognized other images of Peter and Charlotte, flickering stills in different locations and different decades, from what I could tell. The longer I thought about what I had heard, the clearer and louder Jasper's inner monologue seemed to get. Then suddenly, it was much louder, and I realized that he was with me in the clearing.

I opened my eyes and saw him standing a few yards away from me.

"What happened?" I hoped that Alice had fared okay. I don't know why I thought that my presence would have helped; I probably would have just fucked things up more.

Jasper looked at the ground. "I didn't stay long either, obviously. I didn't want Alice to... I was afraid I couldn't control my temper."

Jasper's thoughts were almost incoherent. He was thinking about Alice's emotions over the past month: stress, fear, exhaustion, and most of all, guilt. I kept picking up phrases like "_not like herself" _and "_she's hiding something from me, hiding something with __**him**__._"One dark thought, a question, flitted through his mind briefly.

"No, Jasper, it's not like that. God." I shook my head. How could he doubt Alice like that? I was mad at myself and at Alice. I knew trying to hide our private conversations from Jasper and the others was a bad idea, but I had no idea he would jump to that conclusion.

"I... it's not what you think," I continued nervously. "What did she tell you?"

"Fuck you, Edward," Jasper spat at me.

I suddenly felt embarrassed, almost mortified, and I was confused. It took me a second, but when I put what I was feeling with what I was reading from Jasper's mind, I realized that it was Jasper's embarrassment and mortification. He couldn't believe that I had actually picked that thought from his head.

I wanted to placate him, calm him down.

"Jasper, I can tell you that you're the only one she's thinking about. She just wants to protect you."

"From what, Edward? What do you know?" Jasper's frustration added to the thick, heady emotional cocktail that was being forced on me. It was making me uneasy, and I couldn't sit still. I stood and started to pace, watching my bare feet crush the ferns covering the ground.

"Jasper, you need to talk to Alice." After all her careful planning I couldn't fuck it all up now.

"Damn it, Edward!"

I stopped my pacing and looked up. Jasper had moved, and he was standing right in front of me. I let out a long breath. I tried to rein in my emotions, but anything I was feeling was completely overwhelmed by Jasper.

"Jesus, can't you just leave me alone? I don't get a damn minute to myself; you all are always fucking _here _and in my head." I ran my hands through my hair, looking around the small meadow. I felt twitchy and angry and at loose ends.

"Oh, I'm sorry," Jasper said sarcastically. "I'm sorry that my friends getting killed interrupted your 'private time,' Edward. You know, I certainly didn't have the luxury of moping around for weeks after getting changed." He stopped talking out loud, but his thoughts continued.

_Why did Alice ever make us go into the city that day? Those nomads should have gotten him instead. _

Without thinking I cocked back my arm and punched him in the face. Jasper's head snapped back as the deafening crack echoed off the surrounding trees. I stood there dumbly for a second, shocked at what I had done. I _hadn't_ thought, just reacted, a physical manifestation of the feedback loop of anger and frustration that had been building between us.

I realized that mind-reading really didn't help in a fight with Jasper. I knew he was going to hit me back a nanosecond before I felt it, but there was no way my newborn strength and speed was enough to block his one hundred and fifty years of trained reflexes.

It was my first experience of pain after waking up as a vampire. I could actually feel my jaw crack—not the bone, but the whole thing almost crumbled, as if it was a rock crushed by some violent force. I staggered backwards from the impact, my arms instinctively reaching out to steady myself.

I was able to anticipate Jasper's second attack, and I lunged to the left as he swung again. But I didn't see him kick until he hit my right leg, breaking it, and with my own momentum I started falling to the ground.

He landed on top of me just as I started to twist around, effectively pinning my left arm under my body. He twisted my right arm back with one hand, and his other elbow dug into my neck. His steel-toed boot dug into my shin, and it fucking _hurt_. The more I struggled, the deeper his elbow sank into my throat. I knew theoretically I didn't need to breathe, but it triggered something deep in my brain, and it was terrifying.

I was shocked by the overwhelming pain. The burning during my transformation was horrible in its own way, but like a sickness, like a blanketing fever. This pain was razor sharp, honing my anger like a knife steel. My vision dimmed down to a pinprick, and with every short huff of breath I realized I was snarling, accompanied by low steady growl that almost seemed surreal to be coming from my own body.

For all of my movement and noise Jasper was the mirror opposite, quiet and still as he held me down. His thoughts weren't disjointed with anger and emotion like they had been earlier. They were calm, rational, and precise, waiting and planning to react to my next move. He was flipping through memories, carefully weighing my body type and natural fighting style to other newborns he had encountered, deciding what would work best to further subdue me.

I started to feel tired, almost numb. My anger began to calm as Jasper's bodyweight was mirrored by his projected heavy, narcotic emotional calm that deadened my own senses. My breathing slowed down, and I stopped struggling. Theoretically I knew I wanted to get him off me, but I couldn't find the energy to do anything about it.

Through the haze I listened to Jasper's thoughts. They were eerily different than normal, almost clinical and detached. He was wondering if I was calmed enough for him to let go of my arm, allowing him to use both his hands to twist off my head. Hearing that thought shocked me enough to push though the ennui, and I was able to speak, the words slowly drifting through my mind, like air bubbles trapped in honey.

"Jasper," I whispered, "please, don't."

For a minute we both lay there, frozen, while Jasper weighed his options. Then his thoughts shifted, warmed, became again the steady cadence of stream of consciousness that I was used to hearing.

He slowly, carefully, lifted his elbow from my neck and pulled his foot off my legs. He slid off me and backed into a crouch a few feet away. I rolled all the way over onto my back and looked up at the sky. As Jasper's emotions retreated, the pain returned. It was almost a relief after that sickening haze that he had forced on me. I felt emotionally exhausted, and I ran my hands over my face. My jaw felt off, rough, like sandpaper.

"What...?" I ran my fingers more carefully over the edge of my jaw. It was like the broken edge of a piece of concrete, wet and slippery. "What the hell?"

"That's what happens when we get hurt. It's not like human flesh. It will regenerate; give it a few minutes. If it was worse, you'd have to find the piece that broke off and hold it in place for the venom to work." Jasper's voice was quiet, almost difficult for me to hear.

I rolled my head to the right and looked over at him. His face was unreadable, but his thoughts were calm, at least calmer than they had been when he entered the clearing. The scars crisscrossing his face and neck glittered in the faint sunlight that filtered through the canopy of leaves.

I winced as I started to sit up. My leg was throbbing, and I wondered if it was broken too. I didn't want to move, afraid it would hurt more. I stayed propped up on my elbows, both my legs out straight in front of me. My right pants leg was damp with venom, and I realized Jasper had broken it. I held my breath as the pain started to shift and burn.

"Jasper, I'm sorry about Peter and Charlotte." My voice sounded harsh as I gritted my teeth. "I can't imagine what you're going through. But it's not Alice's fault; you have to trust me on this." Jasper didn't move, just continued to look at me.

"Alice and I have been together almost sixty years. This is the first time she has ever kept anything from me."

"I know," I said, unsure what else I could say. I still didn't want to betray Alice's trust. I didn't want any of the Cullens to be harmed; I was so afraid of saying the wrong thing.

"Why do you think someone would kill them? Did it have anything to do with..."

I was cut off as I heard another voice approaching from the south. A second later I heard footfalls, then realized it was Alice approaching us.

"Alice is coming," I said quietly to Jasper.

"I know." Jasper stood and turned toward the sound of her running through the underbrush.

I was afraid to try and get up yet, but I turned toward the woods as I continued rubbing my hand over my jaw. It was starting to smooth out, and the pain there had faded considerably.

As Alice approached her thoughts became clearer, a steady repetition of _don't hurt him don't hurt him don't hurt him. _I wondered if she was thinking about me or Jasper.

She slid out from between two trees, her face an open book matching her frightened thoughts. She looked at the two of us, her eyes darting for a minute to my leg, then back to Jasper.

"Jasper, you left, and I want to explain..."

"What, Alice? Did you know about this? Was there anything we could have done?"

"No, I had no idea, I promise. Ask Edward."

"Whoa, stop, don't bring me into this," I interjected.

"Alice, please, just tell me what's going on." Jasper's voice was soft.

Any remaining anger Jasper had been feeling when he entered the clearing had completely dissipated. He was resigned now to the fact that Alice probably wasn't going to tell him everything, and he was running through his mind every possibility of who could have or would want to kill his friends. He was wondering if it was related to the vampires in the city, and if Alice was in any additional danger. He still wanted to protect her, above anything else.

I wasn't sure whether I wanted to feel relieved. I guessed I was glad I wouldn't have to take sides. Could I even honestly choose between the two of them? I was still so confused about my new role within this family, I really just wanted to keep my head down until I could stop worrying about everything all of the time.

"Jasper, I didn't know. Edward..." Alice shot me a glance, thinking about our previous conversations and how she could give Jasper something, some reasonable explanation.

"Edward asked if any of our friends might know who was in the city. I knew that we'd been talking to Tanya and Kate, but none of us thought to check with anyone else. I... when I decided to call Peter and Charlotte, it didn't change any of my visions, so I didn't think to tell anyone. I'm sorry."

I heard Alice start to run her statement back through her mind, seeing if there were any obvious holes in her explanation. She hoped that Jasper wouldn't have picked up on the fact that she had lied to Eleazar.

Luckily, Jasper wasn't analyzing Alice's response. He was now thinking in more detail of memories of his friends. Not many memories of his time in Mexico, but memories of talking to Peter about politics, hunting through darkened city streets with the Charlotte, and a particularly clear memory of him introducing Alice to the couple, as his wife.

"Let's go back to the house, all right?" Alice said as she walked up and rubbed her hand up and down Jasper's arm. He leaned his head down and rested his forehead against Alice's.

I looked away, embarrassed. I didn't know why I always felt uncomfortable around them when they were like that; it didn't happen around Rosalie and Emmett, or Carlisle and Esme.

"Um, I'll stay here a little while longer, if that's okay." They looked down at me. Jasper frowned at my leg; he was thinking about the last time he had fought a newborn. It was before he left Maria, and he thought maybe he had been a little rough with me.

"You think?" I asked sarcastically. Neither Jasper nor Alice said anything, and a moment later they had both disappeared into the trees.

"Whatever," I said to myself, looking around the clearing.

I still was hesitant to stand up, afraid to put any weight on my leg. Now that Jasper had gone I felt petulant, angry about the pain in my jaw and knee. The pain was weirdly foreign. I hadn't realized how differently my new body reacted to external stimuli. I could feel hot and cold, sharp and soft, but in an almost academic way. Nothing seemed to fully penetrate. I wondered idly if during the transformation the nerve ends retreated from the top layer of the epidermis.

I wondered what sex would be like as a vampire. On the one hand, you had heightened senses and physical strength and speed, but I couldn't imagine it could be as good without the depth of feeling and reaction a human body had. I missed feeling hot, or cold, or uncomfortable.

Besides hunting, the fight with Jasper was the first time I'd felt really connected with my new body since my change.

I waited another twenty minutes, then carefully stood up, keeping my weight on my left leg. I slowly shifted over, and I was relieved to find that my right leg could handle the weight. The pain had completely disappeared. I walked out of the clearing and headed back to the house.

When I returned the thoughts of the rest of the Cullens had changed considerably from when I had left. Although there were still thoughts of Peter and Charlotte, and worry for Jasper, there was hope and concrete planning going on in everyone's minds.

"What happened?" I asked as I pulled open the French doors that led from the back porch to the living room.

Carlisle responded, "We've decided to ask our friends from Alaska for help. Eleazar called back after Jasper and Alice had left, and offered his assistance."

All six of the vampires were seated around the dining room table. It reminded me of a scene from some military movie.

Alice smiled at me. "They will make all of the difference. That's what I was waiting for. By having the others with us, we will outnumber the vampires in the city, and none of us will get hurt."

I frowned; Alice's thoughts were excited and relived, but something seemed off, somehow. I wondered what she and Jasper had talked about on their way back to the house.

Emmett and Jasper were sitting next to each other, quietly talking strategy, figuring out the best time and location to try and ambush the nomads in the city.

Esme and Rosalie were talking about their friends from Alaska, and Esme was wondering if there was room in the house for the additional vampires. Carlisle was looking at the paperwork in front of him, thinking wistfully about the loss of opportunity for Alice to attend medical school at UW.

I stood there awkwardly; there were only six seats at the table, and I would feel weird walking up and trying to integrate myself into the group. Alice looked around at the others, then stood up and walked over to me.

"Don't worry, Edward. I know you'll be sad that you can't fight with us, but it will all work out," She reached down and squeezed my hand. "We have a full day before our friends will get here. Why don't we go play baseball?"

"Baseball?" I asked. Seriously?

"That's a great idea!" Emmett interjected. "We haven't played in ages!"

Everyone's thoughts shifted with Alice's suggestion, and I was bombarded with memories of huge fields, thunderstorms, running and laughter. "Come on," Alice tugged at my hand. "It will be fun!"

[1]http://en[.]wikipedia[.]org/wiki/Hereditary_sensory_and_autonomic_neuropathy

* * *

**A/N:**

**Thanks to everyone for reading and reviewing! I apologize for the delay on getting this chapter posted. Damn graduate school getting in the way of writing fanfic! A HUGE thanks to Feisty for beta'ing this - and on her birthday, no less! **


	12. Chapter 12

**A/N: I usually don't like author's notes at the beginning of a chapter, but I thought it would be fair warning: the category for this story has been updated from 'suspense' to 'suspense/horror.' **

* * *

Algor mortis - The reduction in body temperature following death. This is generally a steady decline until matching ambient temperature, although external factors can have a significant influence. [1]

* * *

I balanced haphazardly on the shifting shale, looking up at what appeared to be the aftermath of a massive landslide. It looked like someone had dumped tons of rock and gravel over the side of the steep mountainside, leveling whatever few trees had attempted to grow at this altitude.

The rain had picked up, and even with my superhuman reflexes it was tough to stay still on the shifting rocks. I saw a boulder jutting up through the rubble a few yards to my left, and I gingerly stepped over to it. I leaned back against its solid weight and looked up at the other Cullens, who were spread out over the crumbled earth.

Jasper, Alice and Rosalie were huddled around what I assumed would be the pitcher's mound. They were animatedly discussing the advantages and disadvantages of playing uphill or down. Carlisle and Esme were measuring out the distances between the bases, using orange spray paint to mark the rocks. I figured the distance between the bases to be almost half the length of a football field.

Emmett was wandering around, and I realized after a minute that he was making his way over to me.

"Hey, man, can we talk a minute?"

Through the sheets of rain I saw Jasper looking over at us. I wondered what emotions he was picking up from Emmett, because I hadn't noticed anything unusual in his thoughts.

Emmett gestured with his head to the tree line half a mile below us. We started down the sheer mountainside, setting off our own mini-rockslides as we went. Once we were under the shelter of the tree canopy, Emmett turned to face me.

"Look, I have to apologize for Jasper."

"Why?" I said suspiciously. Neither of us had mentioned the fight to anyone since we got back to the house earlier that day. I could tell that Jasper was trying not to think about it, and I didn't want to bring anyone else into it.

"You're pissed; he's mad at himself—you guys must have had a pretty bad fight."

"How did you..." I didn't finish my question, as Emmett was answering in his mind. 

_You both came back from the woods reeking of venom. Either you guys were fighting or fucking, and I imagine Alice would have gotten to you all sooner if it was the latter. _Emmett grinned.

"Jesus! That's disgusting." I hit him on the arm, and he started laughing.

"Oh, come on, it's not that big of a deal. He and I fight all the time. He does feel bad about it, though, and wants to apologize."

"Why can't he do that himself?" I looked back up through the trees to the exposed rock face, and I could just make out the figures in the rain. They would have trouble hearing us from this distance.

"He broke my leg, Emmett. He thought about taking my head off, for God's sake!"

"Look, he does feel bad about it, but you have to understand something. You're still thinking like a human." I looked at him for a minute, not saying anything.

Emmett sighed, then continued, "It's different for us. Really, it's not that big of a deal." He was still smiling, and it started to piss me off.

"Not that big a deal? Are you serious?" "Hey, no, hear me out. How long did your leg hurt?"

"Um." His question had surprised me. I thought for a minute. "Maybe an hour? I could run again after half an hour, I guess."

"And what was the worst injury you had as a human?"

"I broke my wrist a couple years ago, when I was drunk at a party. I fell down half a flight of stairs, and didn't even realize until I had sobered up the next morning."

"And I imagine it hurt more than an hour, huh?"

"Yeah..." I could see where he was going with this, but it was still the principle of the thing. "That doesn't make it okay! And he thought about ripping my head off!"

"Hey, I think about fucking Rose every second of every day, but I don't do it." Emmett's grin got wider. "You can't get mad at someone for what they're thinking. That's, like, your cross to bear, with the whole mind-reading thing. You know people think all kinds of crazy things, things they'd never do."

I didn't say anything; I didn't want to admit to Emmett that he was probably right. Emmett took my arm and pulled me a few feet deeper into the woods, until we couldn't see the clearing above us.

"And, look, I've lived with Jasper for a really long time. I consider him to be my brother. And he's a really private person. He's seen... he's had a rough past. For the first fifty years of his life, showing emotion was a weakness that could be exploited. Maria, the woman that changed him? She seriously fucked with his head. And here you come, this guy he was forced to change, and Alice's not telling him why he had to do it, and all of the sudden you've got access to every thought in his mind?"

Emmett looked at me expectantly. I was quiet. I didn't know what to say. Emmett started talking again, each word matching his thoughts.

"I know this is tough for you, and I can say unequivocally that we are all glad that you're here, and, hell, I know I want to you stay with us. I know everyone else does as well. You're good for the family, fresh blood, so to speak." Emmett laughed at his stupid pun. "Jasper's just a little unnerved, that's all. I can tell that he does like you though, even though he's having a hard time showing it."

"Okay," I said after a minute. "That makes sense. Thanks, Emmett, for telling me. I... I keep thinking about how difficult this is for me, but it must be tough for you all, too, me being thrown into your family."

"Hey!" Emmett punched my arm, with much more force than I had minutes ago. "Don't say that! Seriously, we're glad you're here. It'll help a lot with baseball. I'm SO calling you for my team, with your newborn speed and all. Come on!"

Emmett turned, and nimbly started running back up the steep mountainside. I ran after him, and as I scrambled my way up over the slippery rocks I listened to his thoughts. He was excited about finding such a great baseball "field." Over the years they had been playing, they had tried to find more and more challenging locations to make the game more fun. This sheer mountainside, covered in loose rocks and boulders, soaking wet from the rain, with near gale-force winds, was apparently the best they'd come across since a particularly challenging game that took place over five miles of shifting ice floes in the Arctic Circle.

Minutes later, Emmett, Rosalie, Esme, and I were grouped near the boulder I had been leaning against earlier, which was now second base. Alice, Carlisle, and Jasper were up to bat first. They quickly decided to I would play outfield, Esme would pitch, Rosalie would catch, and Emmett would cover the whole infield.

I half ran, half slid farther down the slope, and stopped a couple dozen yards above the tree line. With the rain and wind, it was actually a little difficult to see the home plate. Carlisle was the first up to bat. I saw Esme wind up, and just had time to register the ball speeding uphill before I heard the earsplitting crack of Carlisle's bat making contact.

Over the sound of the rain and wind I could faintly hear the ball slicing through the wind. I frantically scanned the sky, and less than a quarter of a second later I saw movement to my right, a parabolic trail disturbing the rain, subtly rising to a peak and beginning to descend.

I started running, following the trajectory of the ball, which was almost invisible; the rainwater comet tail it was trailing was easier to track. Out of my peripheral vision I saw that I was approaching a larger outcrop of rock, probably solid. I pushed off with my next step and landed with a crack on the jutting bedrock, splitting it as I used to momentum to change direction. I reached out and grabbed for the falling baseball, landing on the ground less than a second later.

The entire play was over in less than a four seconds. It had happened so fast that I wondered if I had really caught the ball, and when I opened my fingers I saw what remained, leather and wool and stitching.

"Oops."

"Hey, Edward!" Emmett yelled from midfield, running downhill a few steps towards me. "It still counts! We've got a ton of baseballs; it happens almost every play. Don't worry about it. Keep up the good work!"

He shot me two thumbs up and turned back towards Esme. I could see her waving to me, her smile barely visible through the rain. Carlisle had made his way back to home plate, and Alice and Jasper were patting him on the shoulder.

The game continued for hours. I found that it was an odd way to play: long pauses, hushed discussion of strategy, then short bursts of movement, a few seconds at most. It was an exaggerated version of the human game in every way. I could see why they waited until a thunderstorm hit if they were in a populated region; it was a brutal and noisy assault on the surrounding environment. Emmett even managed to take out a tree when he tried to tackle Jasper as they both ran for third base.

"See, Edward?" Emmett shouted to me from across the "field" as he helped Jasper up from their collision, both covered in pine needles and small branches. "Not a big deal, you just shake it off!" I rolled my eyes and tried to ignore the curious faces of the rest of the Cullens.

An hour and a half later we were tied, 2-2. With everyone's speed and eyesight, it was really difficult to get past first or second base. The best plays were when the fielding team didn't communicate well and there were midair collisions while trying to catch the ball.

I was up to bat, and more than a little nervous. I had accidentally snapped a bat in two on my first attempt, and now I knew I was being too cautious and not hitting hard enough. Alice was pitching, and she was freakishly fast, even for a vampire. Thank god I could read her mind; otherwise I would be a complete embarrassment for my team.

"Come on, Edward." Rosalie walked up to me as I stood awkwardly at the plate. "Didn't anyone tell you how to properly hold a baseball bat?"

"I played soccer, sorry."

Rosalie was smiling, and I grinned in response. This was the happiest she had been since I had met her. I kept listening in to her thoughts; they were really interesting. The whole baseball thing had started when Emmett joined the family. In his first year after being changed, he was homesick and missing his human family, so Rosalie sewed baseball jerseys for all four of them, Carlisle and Esme, and Rose and Emmett. Baseball was Emmett's great love as a human, understandably, having grown up while Babe Ruth, Ty Cobb, and Lou Gehrig were playing. I didn't know much about baseball, but I certainly recognized those names that I picked out of Rosalie's mind. She was remembering warm summer nights, running and laughing with Emmett.

"Here, let me show you. " She raised an eyebrow as she reached out for my hands. I nodded, and she lightly covered my hands with hers. "Move your right hand farther down, here. There you go. Now wrap it more like this."

She was surprisingly gentle as she manipulated my hands around the bat. The grip did feel better after she was done.

"Now remember to keep your feet shoulder-width apart, and picture your body as a spring that you coil up. You want torque to move your body through the swing. Ever played golf?" I shook my head no. I had no idea that Rosalie was this into sports; I guess eighty years with Emmett had rubbed off.

"Okay, well just don't forget to move your hips this time. Your hips will lead you forward, okay?"

Emmett was snickering behind us, and Jasper, who was catching, was trying not to laugh.

"Jesus, I live with ten-year-old boys," Rosalie muttered under her breath. "Just think before you swing, okay?"

Alice's smile was almost feral when I got set up and looked forward to her on the pitcher's mound. She was running different pitches through her head so quickly that I had trouble following. I was concentrating so hard on reading her mind I almost missed it when she starting winding up, and then milliseconds later the deafening crack of my bat making contact with the ball echoed off the mountainside. I took off running towards the smudge of orange spray paint that marked first base.

The downhill run was almost unreal. My speed and momentum meant that I only had to push off the ground every ten feet or so. It was more of a controlled fall than a sprint. As I approached first base I started to change my path, leaning far to the left to start curving around the edge of the field. I made sure my right foot hit the large flat stone that marked the base, and as it slipped off the wet rock I had to reach out and grab deep into the ground with my left hand, otherwise I would have started to tumble down the rest of the rocky slope.

With the next step I pushed myself farther to the left, forcing the turn and keeping my sight on the ground, trying to find the next solid rock to land on that wouldn't send me flying. I didn't see Carlisle coming, but I could see myself in his mind's eye. He had the ball and was running uphill toward second base. Three more huge steps and I would make it.

Carlisle hit me a second later, one step before I reached the base. His momentum wasn't nearly as powerful as mine, as he was running uphill. We rolled down the mountainside together, hitting the base of an oversized evergreen with a dull thud a second later.

I sat dazed for a minute, covered in wet pine needles that had showered down on us from the impact. Carlisle was sprawled out on top of me, and I looked up at him. He touched the baseball to my forehead.

"Out!" he said as he laughed.

"You guys are a little crazy, you know that?" I couldn't help but smile back. Any intimidating professor vibe I had gotten off Carlisle before was completely gone by now.

"But you're having fun, right?" Carlisle hopped up and offered me a hand.

"Yeah, I am" I smiled back. Carlisle grinned in response and took off up the mountainside.

That had been the third out, and I stayed near the bottom of the field to take up my position in the outfield. Emmett yelled that this would be the last inning; I had lost track.

Alice was the first up to bat. I tried to concentrate on her thoughts, she was trying to figure out the best direction to try and hit the ball. Besides Rosalie and Emmett, she was the best hitter among us. Suddenly a series of visions flashed through her mind. They were so quick I couldn't fully read them.

"What was that?" I said out loud to no one in particular.

They were just flashes, so brief I couldn't really see any of them. I could barely make out light and color; it was like an eclectic episode in her brain.

I could barely make out Alice's slight form at the top of the flight. She was frozen for a minute, and then I could see the movement of the bat as she wound up, preparing to hit. One clear thought ran through her head. 

_Thank god, it's finally time._

And then I heard the crack of the bat hitting the ball, and a second later I saw a flash of movement a dozen feet above my head. This was a crazy long hit, even for her, and I doubted I could even get to it before it hit the ground. I had taken off running as the thoughts passed through my mind; I was instinctively following the water trail through the sky. I darted into the trees, seeing glimpses of the ball through the tops of the branches. With the angle of the ball and the steep slope of the mountainside, it would be almost another half a mile before the ball hit the forest floor. I kept running, dodging trees as I kept glancing up at the sky.

A few seconds later, I heard the ball hit the ground.

"Shit."

I wasn't fast enough but hadn't taken into account the trees slowing me down. At this point I was almost two miles down below the baseball field. I scanned the undergrowth, trying to see through the heavy rain if any of it had been disturbed by the ball.

And then I smelled something. I felt the hairs on the back of my neck rise up, and my whole body tensed. This was the coiled spring Rosalie had eluded to earlier. I couldn't place the smell at first; I just knew it wasn't right. My whole body was almost vibrating with the tension. It was another vampire, I realized. One I didn't recognize.

I didn't know what to do. I looked east and inhaled, then instinctively repeated the same thing toward the west. The scent was slightly stronger to the west—the trail must be heading that way. In the few seconds I was standing there, I realized that the scent was already starting to fade; the pouring rain was almost immediately washing it away.

If it was one of the nomads from Seattle, I didn't want to let them go. Why were they coming this way? And through our one small part of the Olympic forest? It didn't make sense. I wanted to go back and get the others, but if I ran back up there, by the time we made it back the trail would probably be cold. I realized then that Alice might be seeing this in a vision. I thought about how her visions were strongest when people made a very conscious, deliberate decision. I turned to the west, and thought very determinedly. 

_ALICE, I AM HEADED SOUTHWEST, FOLLOWING A TRAIL OF A VAMPIRE. PLEASE FOLLOW ME. _

Then I started running. The smell was diluted by the rain, but I could also start to make out the occasional broken branch or disturbed underbrush, so it wasn't too hard to follow.

After half a mile the scent got more complex, and I realized that a second vampire had joined the first. I continued on for another few miles, heading farther south, winding down through the park, and the path I was on started to look familiar.

My stomach started to tense up, and another cold chill rolled over my body. I was heading back to the farmhouse. The vampires knew where we were.

I skidded to a stop. Were they still there, at the house? Where they waiting for us? Was this an ambush?

Even with my newborn impulsiveness, I didn't have a death wish. If that's where they were, there was no need for me to continue to track them. But what if there were more, and they had followed my trail back up to the other Cullens on the top of the slope? I stood there in an open patch of the forest, letting the rain soak completely through my clothes.

Then I started off again, continuing south. I slowed once the trees started to thin and I could see the faint white outline of the house. I stopped a few feet before the trees opened up into the yard, behind a large hemlock. The house was quiet, and I couldn't see any movement. The scent was no stronger here than it had been in the woods.

Why would they just run by? Surely they knew this was our house; the scent of seven different vampires covering everything would be unavoidable. I meticulously scanned the house, looking for anything out of the ordinary. I started looking around the yard and the gravel driveway, which gently curved around the left side of the house. Then I noticed, right at the left front corner of the house, something small and white lying on the gravel.

I held my breath. It couldn't be a vampire, could it? Then I realized how stupid I was being; I couldn't hear any thoughts except my own. Of course I was there by myself.

Reassured, I started slowly walking towards the driveway. I noticed that I was still holding my breath, and I stopped and inhaled deeply, to see if the scents of the two vampires were any stronger as I approached the side yard.

What hit me wasn't the sweet, delicate smell of a vampire, but something else entirely. It wasn't strong, and it wasn't fresh, but it was unmistakable. I immediately tried to stop walking, my body was now trying to propel itself forward of its own accord, being drawn to the smell of human blood like a magnet.

I dropped to my knees, forcing myself to stop moving. _Stop breathing, stop breathing, stop breathing. _I closed my eyes, and with every ounce of self-control I had I ground my jaw and forced myself to stop on the next inhale. I sat there, rigid and unmoving, trying to convince myself that I could open my eyes and keep walking forward without breathing again.

As I sat there, I realized, too, that I didn't hear the telltale wet beating of a heart. I swallowed and slowly opened my eyes again. In some small way, I was relived. At least I wasn't in danger of killing anyone today.

I carefully, deliberately, stood up, and started moving forward again. The small white thing on the ground started to come into focus as I approached it.

At first I thought it was a doll's hand. It was too white, too pale and waxy to be real, I thought. Then memories of my summer job popped up unbidden, and images of days old cadavers floated through my mind's eye. Complete exsanguination. Decapitations, multiple gun shots to the chest, stabbings, a single shotgun to the head, anything that would sever an artery, or enough veins, to result in near complete blood loss. Those bodies were this pale.

I couldn't reconcile this in my mind. The images of this hand, the images in my mind of the corpses I had worked on, the thoughts of fear and apprehension, and with it the burn spreading through my throat and up through my brain, like a slow flash-over dulling every other thought. It was making me fucking _thirsty_. I had never felt less human than I did at that moment.

I slowly took another step forward, turning to the right, around the corner of the house. The rain that was still pouring down seemed thick and heavy, gelatinous, and I was having trouble moving forward.

The hand was alone, detached from the wrist that was a few feet away. It wasn't a clean break—it had been ripped from the body. Unwanted clinical assessments started drifting through my dulled mind. It looked like it was postmortem; at least, at least no one had to feel that.

I kept my eyes on the hand and the wrist. In my excellent vampire peripheral vision I knew there were more, more indistinguishable pale organic shapes dotting the entire front yard. I heard something then, and I realized it was myself, talking out loud.

"No, no, no, no, no, no..." I snapped my jaw shut again. I shouldn't be breathing. I realized that I had been breathing, and the heady smell of human blood wasn't any stronger, wasn't ratcheting up my blood lust.

I saw something dark against the grass to my left. I looked over, and realized that it was human hair. The two heads were still attached to their respective torsos. My stomach clenched, and I faintly realized that if I was still human, I would be vomiting right now.

The brown hair was long, spread out over the wet ground. It was a man and a woman, and the woman had long, dark brown hair. I couldn't think at all; my mind was filled with static.

I took another step, and another.

I could see the outline of two faces staring blankly up into the pouring rain. The woman's face was thin, long, and from what I could see of the chin and neck, it was still had a faint olive tone despite its current state. 

_It's not Bella. It's not Bella not Bella not Bella not Bella._

The immediate force of the relief dropped me to my knees, and I sank into the rain-softened lawn. I reached out and brushed the woman's long hair off of the faces.

The sudden relief I had been feeling was gone, gone gone gone.

I started to make some noise, something freakish and inhuman and almost unrecognizable. I did know these faces.

The memory of Angela and Ben, laughing, flushed and drunk in our favorite dive bar, was superimposed in my mind's eye over the two lifeless, waxy masks in front of me.

* * *

[1] wikipedia[.]org/wiki/Algor_mortis


	13. Chapter 13

Hamilton's equation: An equation that describes mathematically whether or not a gene for altruistic behaviour will spread in a population:

rb [is greater than] c

where c is the reproductive cost to the altruist, b is the reproductive benefit to the recipient of the altruistic behavior, and r is the probability, above the population average, of the individuals sharing an altruistic gene. [1]

* * *

I sat in the pouring rain and looked down at the faces of my friends. My body was frozen in place, unaware of the pelting rain or the faint smell of human blood. My mind, however, my powerful vampire mind was moving a million miles an hour and trying to make sense of the scene in front of me.

This was bait, I realized. This was bait to draw us to Seattle. She knew, Maria knew, that these were my friends. This was deliberate.

I thought back to the conversation I had with Alice on the front porch when the others had tried to go to Seattle. It seemed like a lifetime ago, and was so overshadowed by what had immediately followed – my attempt to go into the city, running into the hiker on the trail, and... what happened after that – that I hadn't really thought that much about our conversation. Through her visions, Alice knew that Maria had been trailing me for weeks, planning on changing me. This was why Alice had set Jasper up to turn me, to save me from that fate.

So there was no way that my finding Ange and Ben in our front yard was anything but a premeditated action. Maria had somehow found the house and was trying to draw us out and force the confrontation. Maybe all of the murders in the city weren't just thoughtless feedings, but also attempts to rouse the human-loving Cullens to action. What did Maria want, though? I still couldn't figure that out.

My mind was stretching, thin spiderwebs fluttering out and probing every crevice of my memory, trying to explain why. _Why kill my friends?_ If Maria and the others knew where we were, why not wait here and ambush us? My thoughts were so fast they were tripping over themselves, and things started to blur.

I decided then that it didn't make a difference. The motive was inconsequential, because I knew now what I had to do. There was no choice, no waiting to talk with the rest of my new vampire family, no waiting for backup from Alaska, no more planning, no more strategy. I straightened up out of my crouch, turned west, and started running.

* * *

I ran slightly south through Olympic National Park, avoiding the northern slopes where the rest of the Cullens were probably still waiting for my return with the baseball. Or would they be? It had been almost half an hour now since I had left. It felt longer than that, but my brain now tracked time perfectly, an atomic clock, unrelenting.

I wondered what they would do when they saw the bodies in the front yard, if they would try and follow me. I was sure the trail of my scent wouldn't last long in the pouring rain. Alice must have been seeing, this, though, seen me following the trails of the nomads through the woods, and finding the corpses of my friends. They wouldn't be far behind, I decided. Maria would accomplish what we wanted by leaving her calling card, this would push them to immediate action.

The southern part of the forest was different than the rest. Instead of the mossy, damp rainforest surrounding the house, this was all tall, rugged firs with the snowcapped mountains as a constant backdrop. It reminded me of Banff and the trip I took there with my parents when I was thirteen. I shook my head, trying to avoid thinking of my parents.

I wished that running took up more of my concentration. I needed a distraction; I didn't want to think about anything. I didn't want to think about the mutilated bodies I had left behind, or the assuredly hopeless mission in front of me. But the trees just seem to spread apart before me, and my feet followed a path so clearly drawn it felt inevitable.

Without anything else to concentrate on, my traitorous mind was running through every potentially disastrous scenario that awaited me in the city. Unwanted, mental images of the faces of my parents were juxtaposed over those of Angela and Ben. My mind ran through everything that Maria and the others had done, could do, to everyone I loved.

I thought about Angela and Ben. I hoped that it had been quick, at least. I hoped they had been together.

I continued following the gently decreasing gradient of the forest floor. The feel of the soft ground under my feet changed, and I realized I was once again crossing a hiking trail. It was late, almost ten at night, and luckily the path was empty. Unlike the last time.

The realization that followed was so overwhelming that I tripped when my foot hit a deep rut on the side of the trail, my ankle momentary tangled in roots and thick ferns.

I landed hard on my hands and knees, and after the initial shock of falling wore off, I sank farther down, resting my head on my forearms. I breathed in the heady scent of the thick, loamy soil that pressed against my arms and face.

The horror stories that played out in my mind moments earlier, the thoughts of what had happened to Angela and Ben, were exactly what I had done to the woman on the trail. I knew how scared they must have been, because I knew, I intimately knew, how scared that woman had been.

Her mind had been an open book to me as I killed her. Her stream of consciousness skewed and surrealistic from fear; her thoughts of her husband, free-associations of harbors and sailboats and an older woman, cobblestone streets, a little girl, the woods around us, her thoughts of regret and sorrow and anger and love were all branded into my mind, my neural pathways permanently rerouted.

That was what Angela and Ben had experienced, the pain and fear and terror that I had caused for someone else, someone else's friend.

And now that I had started down that path, I couldn't stop myself from mentally replacing Angela with that hiker: her blood, her skin, her heartbeat, her bones folding under my arms like balsa wood, now replaced with Angela's.

I took a shaky, stuttering breath, then screamed into the dirt, silencing the birds and insects around me.

What was I possibly thinking? Why was I even trying to go to Seattle? What could I possibly accomplish? I couldn't stop Maria or the others. I would just hurt more people, people I loved, strangers, it didn't matter. I was an animal, some disgusting thing, a loaded gun waved around by a madman in a crowded room.

I unclenched my fists and slowly and deliberately rolled over onto my back. The rain was still coming down pretty heavily, and I could feel the small rivulets of water washing the dirt from my face. I watched the occasional raindrop fall straight down onto my open eyes; whatever protective instinct I'd once had to blink was gone. It wasn't uncomfortable, just strange. Alien.

I lay there, watching the patches of dark gray sky through the black branches of the firs and hemlocks. I didn't know what to do.

I was utterly and completely alone. I couldn't go back to the house; I couldn't. I didn't want to be left behind with whatever remained of Ben and Angela while the others regrouped and went off to deal with Maria and the newborns. And I couldn't go on to Seattle on my own, could I? I would just end up making things worse.

A third option was flickering, a small light in my mind. I could just leave: turn south, or north, run to Canada, leave behind the rest of the Cullens and Seattle, leave behind my fear and guilt and regret. I could leave it all and start out on my own, a blank slate. But that thought was almost more terrifying than anything else I could imagine. That road opened a trapdoor into a vast abyss, an empty unknown I wouldn't even begin to know how to fill.

How had this happened? I wasn't a bad person before. It wasn't fair. I didn't deserve this, becoming this thing I didn't want. I didn't want to leave behind everything I knew, everything I was familiar with, everything that made up who I was, who I used to be.

"It's not fair," I said quietly to the dark woods surrounding me.

Saying it out loud made me realize how ridiculous it was, and I laughed. It reminded me of my father. We hadn't talked much, even when I was younger and lived at home. I was closer with my mother, the psychiatrist, my source for guidance and help with girls and school and life, my inspiration to go into medicine.

My dad was who I went to when I needed money or a co-signature for a lease on my shitty apartment. He was much older than my friends' dads, already in his early sixties, almost ten years older than my mother. When I did try to confide in him on rare occasions, complaining about something stupid, he wouldn't talk, but instead would raise one eyebrow as he looked at me. He had a small scar there on his forehead, from a piece of shrapnel from Vietnam. He never had to say anything to me; that scar said enough.

He was a good guy, though. Never complained, always did the right thing. Got up every morning and went jogging, no matter how horrible the weather was.

The right thing. What was that for me, now? I thought again about my parents. It was a Tuesday night, so they would be home, sitting in their mismatching La-Z-Boys, my mom reading some dense novel recommended by the _New York Times Sunday Book Review_, my dad still working on the Sunday crossword puzzle. I could almost smell their house, the faint scent of my family dog sleeping on the floor between their chairs, the smell of books and coffee and my mom's tea.

There wasn't a choice, really. I had to keep them safe. I had to try, at least.

I pushed myself up off the damp forest floor, turned back west, and started out again through the thick, wet ferns and undergrowth.

* * *

It took me only another few minutes of running to reach the 101, snaking alongside the edge of Hood Canal.

I looked back and forth along the highway and quickly reached a decision on the best way to proceed. I ran across the asphalt, cleared the guardrail, and jogged over the narrow, sandy beach. I stopped at the water's edge. I was starting to feel edgy and nervous. Every step closer to the city was ratcheting up my fear and anticipation.

I slowly worked my way into the water, my sweatpants and t-shirt sticking to my skin as I got deeper. The river was cold, probably too cold for human skin, but not even uncomfortable for me. I couldn't risk running into anyone just yet, and I figured this would be the easiest way to get into the city.

Once the water was over my shoulders I dove down, moving deep to the center of the basin. I couldn't see much, even with my improved eyesight, but it was nice to know that vampires didn't float. I turned north and started swimming, feeling the gentle pressure of over one hundred feet of water above me.

Swimming was definitely slower than running, and it took almost half an hour to reach the Sound. I surfaced when I reached the Hood Canal Bridge, and again when I hit the open waters of the Puget Sound. It was confusing and hard to keep my bearings when I stayed deep underwater, but I didn't want to risk any chance of coming into any human contact before I had to, as unlikely as it was as this late hour.

The current picked up when I entered the Sound, and I turned south and rounded what I guessed was the cliff of Foulweather Bluff. At this point I could start to see the lights from the city, even under the surface of the water.

Another twenty minutes passed, the water continuing to lighten with the ambient light from the city skyline, and I could feel the minute pull of the current to my right, into Salmon Bay. I was never so grateful for all of Seattle's waterways and inlets; skimming the sea floor I was deep enough that I couldn't smell anything but the water, couldn't hear anything but the quiet whooshing of the water around me. I followed the flow of the water and made my way deep along the center of the main waterway diving Seattle.

I kept looking up to the water's surface to count the bridges, barely visible from my depth, until I made out the distinctive old drawbridge, distorted by the current flowing above me, a few hundred feet ahead.

I stopped. Directly to the north would be the medical center, the university, and just north of that was my old apartment, which was only blocks from where Angela and Ben lived. Had lived.

My parents were in the northeast of the city, so I would start from Angela and Ben's apartment and work my way up. The ME's office was also nearby, and I figured I could check there, too.

My plan was about as half-assed as you could get; I would check every place I had been in the weeks leading up to my encounter with Jasper, any place where Maria might have seen me. I hoped to maybe pick up the trail of one of the vampires, maybe even attempt to check in on my friends and parents.

I racked my brain, trying to remember any other place I had been in the few weeks leading up to my first encounter with Jasper, anyone else besides Ben and Angela, Mom and Dad, and my coworkers, that Maria could have seen me with. This would be my one chance, and I didn't want to miss anything, or anyone.

_Bella Bella Bella Bella Bella Bella_

I was studiously trying to ignore that voice, the fear making it an eerie descant over the cadence of my other thoughts. Maria had seen me, _maybe_, with Bella for one evening, if she happened to be following me for every minute of the last few weeks of my human life. I had spent more time with Mike, for God's sake. I didn't even know where she lived.

Since I was still submerged I couldn't take a deep breath to calm myself, my instinctive reaction, so I closed my eyes and counted to ten. This was incredibly stupid, all of the people just a hundred feet above me, the risk I was putting them in.

I also had no idea how the thoughts of so many people would affect me. At least they were human, and I knew dealing with human minds was easier than vampire minds. I just wouldn't breathe. That would hopefully hold off my bloodlust for the time being. I hoped.

I slowly made my way up the sandy bottom of the bay, stepping up the steep incline of the northern bank, and could feel the slight change in pressure as the weight of water in the narrow canal lifted off my body. Looking up I could make out a pier and the underbellies of the docked boats gently swaying back and forth.

It was now after eleven at night, but the medical campus of course would never really be quiet. I was stupid to start here, I thought. All of the people inside the hospital, the surrounding buildings? The well-lit campus streets and walkways?

It was too late to change my mind, and I started to surface. I noticed that the rain had finally let up, and at the same time I realized that the water had been providing a pretty decent auditory buffer from the thoughts surrounding me. I winced as the nearly inaudible hum, which I had been attributing to the rain while I had been swimming, increased in volume and became more distinctive.

I kept my head low in the water, only my eyes and ears above the softly lapping waves. There must not have been anyone very close by, because everything I heard was muted and distant, like a television set playing quietly on the other side of the house, except it was hundreds of televisions.

I slowly, carefully swam to the edge of the dock. I reached out and rested my hand on the closest pillar, slimy and slick with seaweed. I dug my fingers in a little, creating miniature grips. I reached up with my other hand, and half a second later I was crouched on the wooden slats of the pier.

I waited a few moments, to see if I would adjust any more to the hum in my mind. At this point it still wasn't too bad, but I knew that no one was very close. I started walking along the length of the pier, my bare feet leaving dark footprints in my wake.

The first thing I needed to do was find dry clothes, and maybe a pair of sunglasses. I wasn't as lucky as Jasper, whose eyes were a warm light brown now, a month after drinking human blood (_my blood_, I thought sourly). Between being a newborn and the incident with the hiker, I knew my eyes wouldn't pass for anything close to human, even late at night.

There was a building ahead of me, at the end of the pier. I wasn't sure exactly what it was. I could tell it was still part of the campus, but it didn't look like part of the medical center. It was only one story tall, dull and brick, with few windows. The steady hum of voices was still too low to make anything out, so I was safe in assuming the building was empty.

I walked up to the double glass doors, and very, very gently pushed them in with my palms, increasing the pressure carefully as I tried to force the locked doors. I couldn't figure out why they made an awful screeching noise, metal against metal. I winced and looked around frantically, making sure I wasn't drawing any attention.

I looked back at the doorway. I had been so gentle. I hadn't thought I had pushed too hard; what had happened? I shook my head when I saw the doorframes slightly bent and out of shape. The doors were supposed to swing out, not in. They now hung sadly off the frame, one almost completely detached. I slid between them and looked around to get my bearings.

It was some sort of storage facility, littered with marine supplies and five-gallon buckets. I noticed that against the far wall was a row of lockers. I walked over and carefully dug my fingers into each locked metal door, prying them open to see what was inside. In the third locker I found a pair of coveralls and a large pair of knee-high rubber boots. It looked like the kind of getup someone would wear clamming in the mud. It wasn't perfect, but I didn't have time to be picky.

I quickly stripped off my wet clothes, ripping them from my body. I was careful though when I stepped in to the overalls, zipping them up so slowly that each set of teeth I pulled through the zipper made a distinctive plastic click. I stepped into the boots and started back to the front doors, squeaking with each step.

Something on a desk near the front caught my eye – a pair of reflective sunglasses. I quickly stepped over and put them on. I blinked a few times; the subtle scratches and imperfections on the surface were almost too much to see though, almost impossible to ignore. I tried to unfocus my eyes a little bit, the way Emmett had recommended with my computer monitor, and it helped. I would be able to make my way around, at least.

I left the building, hugging the edge, trying to stay out of the light cast from the streetlights onto the paths that wound their way up to the medical center. In front of me was a cement multi-story parking deck, which I knew served at the reserve parking for the medical center; the "real" parking deck was huge, a twenty-decked monstrosity that sat in front of the main hospital building.

I darted across the tree-lined service road to the back side of the parking deck. The low hum in my mind was starting to increase steadily, and I knew there must be some people inside. I could hear a few voices, maybe fewer than half a dozen, louder and coming from multiple locations in front of me. They seemed to be coming from above, on the upper levels.

I started to make my way along the edge of the concrete wall, towards a concrete stairwell leading down to a metal door. I walked down the steps and forced open the door, which was marked "Authorized Personnel Only." Luckily this door was intended to swing in, and there was only a low metallic thunk as the lock broke, which echoed dully around the quiet lower level of the deck. It was fully underground, the exit to the main road a level above me.

I remembered then that this reserve parking deck was only a half block from the ME's office, which was just up the street to my left. Maybe I could eavesdrop on my former coworkers from the northern-most corner of this bottom level. My range for vampires was that good; I knew from living with the Cullens. Maybe a couple dozen feet and a few concrete walls would be close enough for me to read their minds without triggering my bloodlust.

Thinking about blood, I decided to try and taste the air, breathe just a bit. It was so disconcerting not breathing; although it wasn't a necessity anymore, all of my instincts were screaming out against the loss of my sense of smell. The minds I could read were at least two stories up, I decided. This level was below the exit from the deck, and there were only two forlorn cars against the far side of garage. There was little risk of anyone coming down here.

I opened my mouth slightly and drew in a whisper of air. The smell was bad, really bad. The few places I had been so far as a vampire: the Cullen's farmhouse, the woods, my car, the beach I had gone to with Emmett and Jasper, had smelled warm and natural, or sweet, like vampires. The car had been a little off, smelling of chemicals and plastic, but bearable. But that had nothing on this parking deck, which reeked of urine and gasoline and what I figured must have been human food, something I hadn't been exposed to at all. I almost wanted to gag.

It was good, though, for my bloodlust, because that disgusting bouquet cut the faint undercurrent of human scent. It wasn't strong, but it was sweet and distinctive. Nervous at that thought, I clenched my jaw shut and started slowly making my way along the perimeter of the basement wall.

I focused on the dim voices dozens of feet above my head. I could make out seven people, the last two so high up on the deck their minds were fuzzy and instinctive to me. They must have been employees at the hospital, getting off the evening shift. Two people were talking out loud two levels above me, having a conversation about some of the patients they had seen earlier that day. One was deep into some story about having to call in a social worker to deal with an elderly patient that didn't want to return to his nursing home, and the other kept trying to interrupt with stories his own annoying patients, wanting to talk about a snotty rich old women who took out her IV.

As I got halfway across the lot, I could start to pick up more soft voices, and I was getting hopeful that I could hear into the ME building across and just up the street. I was skirting my way around a pile of wooden pallets, still paranoid about being fully exposed under the yellow halogen lights and trying to stay in the shadows, when I heard something.

I could hear footsteps, the clicking of high heels making their way down the ramp coming down onto my level on the other side of the garage. I moved at inhuman speed the rest of the way around the pallets and ended up standing frozen behind a concrete pillar. How the hell could someone be down here? All of the voices I could hear in my mind were still faint, at least a floor or two above me. I slowly reached around the pillar and watched in horror as I saw the small figure slowly descend down the steep ramp.

My hands gripped into the concrete, crumbling it under my fingers. This was a joke, some hideous cosmic joke. I saw her stumble and drop her purse, and I ground my teeth together so hard that I could hear it, like marble scraping against marble.

Even through the scratches and smears on the sunglasses, even across the length of the basement, half the length of a soccer field, even with her wearing a ill-fitting pantsuit, like some little girl playing dress-up, I knew without a doubt that it was Bella.

[1]http://en[.]wikipedia[.]org/wiki/Inclusive_fitness

**A/N:  
Thanks as always to Feisty for being such an awesome and supportive Beta! **

**Also, I am amazed: Walter Cannon has been nominated for two Indie Awards! I am so touched that people would take the time to nominate my story. Thank you, thank you, thank you.**

**And finally, I'm sorry for anyone reading this that is from Seattle - I have never been there, so I'm sure that what I've gathered from GoogleMaps and Wikipedia is sorely lacking. Apologizes for any inaccuracies!  
**


	14. Chapter 14

**Disclaimer: All characters, etc. are the property of Stephenie Meyer.**

* * *

Trail pheromones: A type of pheromone used by social insects and some lepidopterans to recruit others of its species to a food source. [1]

* * *

Bella was walking slowly across the dimly lit parking garage. She had picked up her fallen purse and was now rifling through it. I could hear the distinct clicking of her car keys as she dug around with her hand.

Her hair was pulled back, messy and loose, and her clothes were wrinkled. She looked exhausted. I got mad for a minute, thinking about how careless she was being, walking around in an empty parking deck at eleven at night. My fingers gripped the concrete pillar that I was hiding behind.

Bella turned her back to me as she continued on to the small silver car parked against the far wall. I couldn't see her face any more, and I pulled off the stupid sunglasses in frustration. I dropped them to the ground, not thinking, and that small noise made Bella stop and turn towards me. Her eyes darted around, and she looked a little nervous. I bit down on my lower lip so hard I could start to smell venom.

After a tense thirty seconds, she turned back around and continued her slow walk to the car. Apparently I was well hidden in the shadows.

I was angry, and confused. Why couldn't I hear her? I noticed it also when I overheard her phone call that day on the highway, but she was farther away then. Now she wasn't even thirty feet from me, and there was nothing from her mind, nothing at all. I could hear the thoughts of the middle aged-guy three levels up, but I couldn't hear a thing from her.

Well, that wasn't entirely true. I could hear her breathing, soft little sighs, and I could hear her heart beating, a steady, quiet seventy-seven beats per minute. I could hear the wet quivering pumping of each beat, the slightly offbeat tha-thump of the contracting chambers, and I could picture the dark purple muscle empty and refill, empty and refill with blood. I swallowed.

I had to get out of here. I looked around, calculating the forty or so feet back to the service door I had come through. The ramp up to the next level was across from me, about fifty feet away, but I would be exposed if tried to make a run for it. I really wasn't sure how fast I could run, what it would look like to humans. I couldn't risk it.

I could stay, though, stay and wait until Bella left. I turned my head to the left, around the other side of the pillar, and watched her continue her slow pace to her little car. Could she walk any slower? I started to get antsy, and more nervous. I couldn't do this. I couldn't let her just drive away, when I knew what was out there on the streets. But staying here was just as bad.

Bella walked up next to the driver's side door and dropped her keys.

"Shit." Her voice was quiet, almost hoarse, a whisper echoing faintly against the concrete walls. She crouched down and started to reach for the keys, which were now resting next to the front tire.

Unthinkingly, I breathed in.

My thirst, which I usually tried to keep locked up in some small compartment in the back of my mind, exploded. It was like opening Pandora's Box; every dark and unconscionable thought I ever had swarmed to the front of my mind, dark and buzzing, overwhelming everything else.

My field of vision dimmed, hazy and gray around the edges until all I could see was Bella. All other sounds faded until all I could hear was her beating heart. And although I had snapped my jaw shut so hard I could feel it crack after that one errant breath, the smell of her blood had woken up every cell in my body.

If it wasn't for the concrete support I was hiding behind, Bella would have been dead before I could even put together a conscious thought.

Instead, the graffitied pillar took the initial brunt of my body. My fingers clenched, digging deep into the rough concrete, and I pushed forward, through the column, which crumpled and collapsed.

The top third of the post and parts of the concrete ceiling fell straight down onto my body. It was heavy enough to drop me to the ground, and several large pieces broke over my back and shoulders. The shock of it was enough to stop my forward momentum, and I lay still under the rubble as the deafening sounds of the collapse echoed around the basement level.

Although I was on the ground and surrounded by debris, the view in front of me was clear, and I could see Bella. She was still crouched down next to her car, but she had turned around, her back against the tire, and her arms over her head, as if to protect it from the ceiling falling in. She was breathing heavily, her heart rate almost doubled, and she was staring right at me.

I wanted to get up and go to her, and the urge was so strong that I was up on my hands and knees before I realized what I was doing. It took everything I had to try to convince myself not to move. I dug my fingers deep into the cement floor to keep myself there, the harsh scraping noise making Bella flinch.

I couldn't stay here; she couldn't stay here. The hundreds of pounds of concrete on my back wouldn't stop me from moving, the smell of Bella still fresh in my mind. I squeezed my eyes shut, trying not to think about it. It was unlike anything I had smelled before; it was... I had to stop. She had to leave. I didn't trust myself to move in any direction but towards her.

My lungs were still full of air, I realized. I could say something to make Bella run without having to breathe again. She had to get out of here before razor-thin self control snapped.

"Bella, run. Run as fast as you can." My voice sounded rough and harsh, not like the smooth, lilting vampiric tone I had gotten used to over the past month and a half.

Bella stared a few seconds longer, than softly said, "Are you all right? Are you hurt? Can you move?"

She winced as she looked at the rubble still on my back. She slowly raised herself up, keeping her back against the car. But instead of moving to get in and drive off, or even try to run for the ramp leading up to the exit, Bella pushed off the car door and took a step closer to me.

I shook my head violently, not understanding. Why wasn't she running? I knew she was afraid; the air was almost palpable with it, radiating from her body like heat waves, like pheromones evolutionarily designed just for me. 

_Run_, I mouthed toward her, afraid to try and speak again. I didn't have much air left. I could taste it, stale and old in my mouth. She shook her head and continued slowly inching towards me, thirty feet away from me, then twenty nine. It was her own funeral procession, created of her own stupidity and lack of self-preservation.

I dug my fingers in deeper and dropped my head. I couldn't even look at her; it was too much. I could hear each step, the dull click of her high heels, her gait uneven and slow. I looked at the dirty ground of the garage floor. A layer of dust was covering the grime and dried gum in my field of vision.

"Do... do I know you?" Bella's voice was a little stronger, but still quiet. "You said my name. How … how did you know my name?" I could tell Bella made that connection as she said it out loud, her breathing and heart rate, which had started to settle after the noise of the collapse, were increasing again.

I didn't answer, didn't even move. I could feel my body tense up, a spring coiling tighter and tighter with each step Bella took. Eleven feet, ten feet. I could now feel the heat from her body warming the air around us both. She was like a little star in the cold vacuum of outer space, valiantly heating the empty dead dark matter around it.

Her footsteps stopped, and she made a noise, a little like a sob, and I could hear the sound of her arms moving, the fabric of her jacket chafe against itself and her arms. I could hear the skin of her palms touch her face.

She made another sound, like she was trying to say something but couldn't get it out.

"Ed... Edward? O_h my god_,"she whispered, almost inaudibly.

I slowly lifted my head, millimeter by millimeter, raising my eyes up her shoes, her brown dress pants, her baggy brown jacket, two shades lighter than the pants, her exposed forearms covering her chest, and finally her face, her mouth covered by her hands. I could see every eyelash, many wet from tears and sticking together. I could see each little hair making up her eyebrows. I saw her slightly jagged fingernails, the subtle pink of her cuticles, and her eyes, huge and fixed on me. It was difficult to focus on her eyes instead of focusing on the reflection in them. I couldn't see myself through her mind's eye, but I could see myself reflected perfectly off her corneas, the small scene so disturbing I had to try to force myself to look past it.

She was seeing my back and legs still covered in huge concrete blocks, and my entire body covered in dust, my hair now a bizarre color between the intense dark red brown and the gray dust that covered it. My hands looked freakishly inhuman, tendons straining, and my fingers were completely submerged in the concrete. My face was a mask, tight with tension. My eyes were completely black.

That was both terrifying and relieving. I knew, from seeing the other Cullens hunt, that my eyes reflected my hunger, giving away the state of my body, primed and ready to attack. But I was glad that Bella wouldn't see the red, couldn't see that I was some sick, monstrous Hester Prynne, my eyes reflecting my crimes.

I forced myself to look past the reflection of the scene in front of her, and looked at Bella. Her face was moving slightly, her labored breathing slightly shaking her whole body. She would hold her breath every few seconds before gaspingfor air, and finally she spoke again.

"What _happened _to you?" Bella said, breaking the silence.

I instinctively stood up and opened my mouth, almost breathing in again to respond when I realized what I was doing. I snapped my mouth shut, and the sound of my teeth slamming together was so unnatural, like a steel trap, that both Bella and I flinched. I just shook my head.

She took a step back, and I took step forward. I couldn't control it; I couldn't hold still if my life depended on it. Now that she had gotten so close, I couldn't let her get any farther away. It _was _like she was a sun, and I was now trapped in her orbit, a deadly unstable planet, one that would likely kill her with the increasing downward velocity, the inevitable pull crashing me into her, destroying her.

Her eyes widened as I took the step forward, and she stumbled back a few more steps, each move mirrored by my own, some sickening parody of a dance. I held my hands up, palms out, to placate her, to apologize—I didn't know—but I couldn't stop walking forward as she walked back.

Her steps quickened, and at one point she almost fell. I reached out to try to grab her, but the look on her face, the look on mine reflected in her eyes, stopped my hands, and my hands grabbed the air instead, curling into tight fists. The bumper of her car broke her fall anyhow, and she stopped against it.

Her eyes flitted around the garage, her heartbeat increasing even more as she realized she was trapped against her car. I stood two feet in front of her, my arms still partially outstretched, my mouth still clenched shut. Her chest was still heaving up and down. She was breathing in wet little gasps, and it was becoming harder and harder to see her as Bella instead of some sweet little animal, wet and warm and delicate, waiting for me. I felt my chest vibrating, felt the low bass of my growl more than I could hear it. It was too low for Bella to hear with her human ears, but on some base level she felt it too, and her heart took off, now mirroring the speed of a rabbit or some other little mammal.

I couldn't, I didn't know how, to stop this. I took a step closer, leaned forward and reached a hand out to either side of Bella, resting them on the bumper. There was only a foot now separating our two bodies. I felt helpless, trapped inside my own mind. I felt like I was drunk, realizing what my body was doing only after the fact. I knew there was a reason I didn't want to do this, but that thought was getting fainter and fainter, something I was trying to hold onto, like an old memory or a name I couldn't remember.

I moved again, the heat of her body pulling me in. The force was so overwhelming that my hands started to strain against the bumper, as if gravity had shifted and I was trying to hold myself up above her. If my arms buckled I would flatten her again the gray hood of her car.

Slowly, inch by inch, I leaned in closer and closer. My arms, my whole body, were shaking now trying to resist the heat and the sound, the sound of her heart. My chest felt the vibrations from her heartbeat, even though we weren't yet touching.

I bent forward half an inch more, and we were now flush together, legs touching legs, her belly against my hips, her chest against my stomach, her head against my neck. She was completely frozen in fear and had stopped breathing.

Her hands had still been up by her face, and now they rested against my chest. They were the only part of her that was moving; they were shaking against me. The heat of them burned into my skin, through the rough material of the stupid coveralls I was wearing. I looked down at the crown of her head, the pale color of her skin visible through the roots of her hair. I could see a very faint pulsing of a vein, and I could picture the fused lines of her fontanel under the tissue-paper-thin layer of skin.

There was something I should be remembering now, something important. Instead I kept pushing forward with my body, bending her back over the hood of the trunk, until I felt her back had hit the top of car. She was shaking more now, whether from my tense body or on her own, I couldn't tell. She still wasn't breathing, but her heart was racing, two hundred beats per minute, maybe more, frantically pushing chemicals of fear through her little body. She took a deep gasping breath, her body overruling her fear, and it felt like a soft little balloon trying to fill up while being pressed against a boulder.

"Edward." Her voice was raspy, hoarse; she didn't have enough air. Her warm breath against my neck felt like a chemical burn.

I was Edward, I remembered. She was Bella. Bella. I randomly thought of some stupid show I'd seen on TV, years ago, a faint memory of some courtroom drama. There was a madman holding people hostage, and the cops were trying to tell him about his hostages, trying to humanize them so he wouldn't start shooting. Bella wasn't an animal. She was more than the warmth and the softness and the heat. I could hear something, very faint, and I realized it was her pelvis, the bones slightly scraping together in some awful horrible way they shouldn't be. I was starting to crush her. I had to try, try to stop this.

With the small amount of air left in my lungs, I ground out, barely above a whisper, "Say something."

I clenched my jaw again and again as my chest was starting to become uncomfortable, my lungs almost completely deflated. "Distract me, Bella."

And I was out of air. My chest felt compressed, like a vacuum was pulling it apart and back together unnaturally. It didn't really hurt; it was nothing in comparison to the mind-numbing burn in my throat, but it started to take the edge off, my hunger distracted just a little bit by some minute sliver of discomfort.

Bella tried to take in another deep breath with a high pitched whine that betrayed the pain she was in, flattened between the hood of the car and my body.

"I came here tonight to see this old man for work." Her voice was getting softer and softer with each word; if it hadn't been for my sensitive ears I wouldn't have been able to hear her.

"He... he was here to be treated something, CHF, I think? He didn't want to go back to the nursing home." She took another gasping breath.

"He had told the nurses that they mistreated him there. But... but when I got there, he told me a said that the little red-headed girl? From that comic strip, _Peanuts_?" She paused again, her hands pushing ineffectively against my chest. I wondered how hard she was pushing. I could feel the pressure, but it seemed so light. My arms were still tense, shaking slightly, still trying to hold myself up off her, trying not to crush her completely.

"Charlie Brown, that little girl he never saw, but he was in love with? It was a true story." Bella continued after a minute. It was starting to get hard even for me to hear her. I looked down more at Bella, inadvertently pulling back some and relieving a bit of the pressure from my shoulders and chest. Her head fell back, thunking softly against the surface of the trunk, and her eyes met mine.

"Charles Schulz, he was in love with a girl—he proposed, and she turned him down. My patient said that Schulz never got over her, never recovered from the heartbreak." Every few words she stopped, haltingly, before continuing. The room she gained by our shifting positions wasn't helping enough, and she still couldn't breathe properly.

"He was still desperate for that little red-headed girl," she continued, so faintly that I was reading her lips now more than actually hearing her speak. "My patient said that he didn't want to go back to the nursing home because his wife had died there. He didn't care anymore; he just wanted to die too."

Bella had tears in her eyes, and one slid down her temple as her eyes drifted closed. Her skin was paler than before, almost ashen. I watched the tear meet her hairline, darkening the hair there minutely. Without being able to stop myself, I leaned down and touched my lips to the wet track.

The salty skin, the heat, it was unlike anything I had ever tasted before. I heard a shrieking metallic noise, and I realized I was twisting the metal on the bumper, deforming it as my hands clenched uncontrollably.

My mind was twisting and bending as well. Something deep was bubbling up. The static, which was so overwhelmingly loud when I had first breathed in, back behind that concrete pillar, had started to fade. But now it was back in full force, and I felt like myself, my awareness, was drowning deeper and deeper into the dark.

My lips traced the trail of her tear to her hairline, down past her ear, but I was too strong. It was too much force, and my top lip pulled too hard on the little soft bump of her ear, and the skin tore. I was shaking so hard now I could feel the vibrations through her body, through the car itself and vibrating back. Something had taken over now, something horrible and dark, and I couldn't stop it. The warmth hit my tongue, sliding through my lips.

_I'm sorry_. I thought. _Oh God, I'm sorry. I'm so, so sorry._

My mouth opened further, and I scraped my top teeth along the skin of her neck, grating the flesh, and I bit down hard.

It was as if six billion years of evolution had culminated in this single moment. Every twist and turn in the development of human race, the sine wave of evolution, mutating single-celled organisms to plants to reptiles to mammals to humans was for this purpose, to create this blood, for me. It was two puzzle pieces sliding together, two halves of DNA zipping together, each adenine matching each thymine, each cytosine connecting to a waiting guanine.

My teeth sunk in further, and the blood started to rush into my mouth, the major veins and arteries severed, and now her heart pumped all that blood over my tongue, down my throat, warming and lighting up every part of my body.

The alien darkness that had taken over my mind was now too much; it was blackening all of my senses, a tar coating it all, even my sense of taste. Through the haze I realized something, a faint flicker of a thought: this wasn't me; this wasn't my bloodlust that I was drowning in. The thoughts were too foreign, ruining this moment, tainting the perfect taste in my mouth. I breathed in through my nose, and something sharp and sweet cut through the smooth warmth of the blood. There was another vampire there, in the garage with me.

That thought snapped me back into conciousness, and something I had never experienced before tore through my body. I now had one thought alone: something else wanted my prey. Something was coming, and it wanted what I had. My body reacted with a primal instinct that overthrew even the bloodlust. I whipped my body around, my back now to Bella's broken body lying over the hood of the car.

Before I could even start to look around I realized that Bella's blood was now dripping onto the plastic surface of the car, her heart pumping it out of the wound in her neck, and I was missing it. It was the single most maddening thought I had ever had. I frantically looked back at her body, her chest slightly moving up and down with her shallow breathing. I was growling now, snarling loud, and the sounds were echoing not only from the concrete walls of the parking deck, but echoed by something else, the vampire standing at the end of the parking ramp.

I looked back up at the vampire in front of me. I had never seen him before, even in all of Alice's visions. He was wearing jeans and nothing else. His dark hair was short, a buzz cut. He eyes matched mine, black faintly edged with red. But his face, good God his face was a reflection of his mind, which was unlike anything I had ever heard or experienced. It was an endless abyss, dark and frightening and completely insane, without any train of thought or self-realization. It was the mind of an animal, mad, and it was more terrifying than anything I could have ever imagined.

It was that darkness that I had thought was mine, thought was my bloodlust, but it was just me hearing him.

What conscious thought I could make out from him was his realization of Bella behind me, and the blood starting to pool next to her head, soaking her ponytail.

That realization, both his and mine, broke the short standoff between us, and we both start to run.

There had been about thirty feet between us, and I reached him slightly over the halfway point, realizing luckily that I was faster. His mouth was open, teeth glistening with venom, and I easily ducked down and grabbed his waist, throwing us both down into the hard cement floor. The crumbling of the concrete beneath us and sound of our own rock-hard bodies colliding drowned out his snarling and snapping teeth. I pulled up, pushing my knees against his stomach, my position above him putting me at an advantage. He reached up and pulled at my arm, and I felt it loosen from the socket.

My scream shocked us both, and his mind blanked for half a second. I took my good left arm and grabbed his hair, and before I even fully realized what I was doing, my teeth were at his throat, and then it was through the granite-like skin of his neck, so unlike animal flesh, repulsive. I forced myself to gnaw at it until I was all the way through, and with the force from my hand pulling on his hair, the head suddenly tore away from the body completely with a sickening snap.

I froze for a second, disgusted and shaken.

Then with all the force I had, I threw his decapitated head against the far wall of the deck, and it cracked in two, sounding like a gunshot. I was gasping, shallow terrified breaths, and I realized that the body was still struggling under my legs, the hand still grabbing my arm.

I reached up and ripped the hand from my arm, taking off two of his fingers in the process. I was soaking in venom, his and mine, and I stood shakily, looking down at the headless body beneath me. I was still breathing shallowly, and the smell of sweet venom was everywhere and too much; it made me want to puke. It had all happened so fast—less than a minute had passed. Did I do that? Kill another vampire?

A moment later the smell of blood began to permeate my senses again, and I looked behind me. Bella was still there, lying at an unnatural angle over the trunk of the car. Her jacket was torn, her legs askew and propped awkwardly on the ground. From fifteen feet away I could see her chest was slowing, barely rising any more. A half a second later I was back by the side of the car, frantically looking over her body.

"Bella?" My voice cracked. I was still breathing, and I realized that her smell had started to change, the warmth and mellowness of her blood now tinged with something sweet. Venom, I realized. It was enough to dampen the bloodlust, and between that and the short fight I was shocked awake, completely conscious and aware of what had happened, what I had done.

"Oh Bella, Bella, I'm sorry, I'm so, so, so sorry, I'm sorry." I was muttering, frantically looking her over, my hands fluttering around, afraid to reach down and touch her, afraid I would break her even more. What had I _done_?

Before it fully sank in, I heard something else behind me. Mental voices, footfalls, and the scent of more vampires. I turned around against, this time more slowly, wearily reaching my arms out protectively over Bella's dying body behind me, my right arm not straightening fully and still aching. Standing in the same place the crazed vampire had been, stood Maria and five other vampires.

Maria smiled at me. "Hello, Edward."

[1]www[.]answers[.]com/topic/trail-pheromone

**Author's note:**

**The voting for the Indie Awards (www[.]theindietwificawards[.]com/)**** is going on now, through March 2nd, and Walter Cannon is up in two categories - Best Action or Drama, and Best AU That** **Knocks You Off Your Feet. Thanks again for the nominations! There are a ton of other great stories up there as well, so go vote!**


	15. Chapter 15

**Disclaimer: All characters, etc. are property of Stephanie Meyer.**

* * *

Cannon-Bard Theory: A psychological theory developed by physiologists Water Cannon and Philip Bard, which suggests that people feel emotions first and then act upon them. These actions include changes in muscular tension, perspiration, etc. [It] is based on the premise that one reacts to a specific stimulus and experiences the corresponding emotion simultaneously... the perception of [an] emotion influences the person's reaction to the stimulus...  
The theory sparked much controversy in cognitive circles due to its suggestion that emotions lack a mechanism. [1]

* * *

"Hello, Edward."

Maria stood surrounded by five other vampires, staggered into a loose V formation with their leader at the center. It reminded me of Canadian geese, the one in the front struggling the hardest against the headwind.

The parking deck was quiet, and behind me I could hear blood dripping off the bumper of Bella's car. I was so overwhelmed, still tensed and on edge from the sudden fight with the crazed vampire, that it took a second for the sound of all the mental voices to focus and intensify in my head.

I wished for a moment that I was still human. When I had run into Jasper in the M.E.'s office, what seemed like a lifetime ago, all of my extraneous thoughts had faded away, drowned in the flood of natural chemicals, forcing every cell in my body to focus on trying to survive.

But now my never-ending multitasking vampire mind was still ticking away happily, drudging up old memories of watching Westerns with my mom as a kid, the theme from _The Good, The Bad and The Ugly _playing along, a disturbingly bizarre soundtrack to the thoughts projecting from the six vampires in front of me, all while still cataloging the rate at which Bella's blood was dripping onto the cold concrete ground.

I couldn't make out what most of vampires were thinking; all but three were thinking in Spanish. I was glad I'd taken French in high school; I didn't think I wanted to try to discern that much information all at once.

The thoughts of the three I could understand were disjointed and jumpy, and I could see they were looking at both the still-twitching, headless vampire lying in the concrete rubble and Bella's unmoving body propped against the blood-soaked trunk of her car.

I couldn't understand Maria's train of thought, but I could see that she was picturing Jasper. She was also thinking of the vampire I had killed moments earlier. In her mind's eye she was thinking of that vampire, but he looked different in her mind, somehow. I realized that she was picturing him as a human.

Dozens of scenes were flashing through her mind, different locations, but all with the dirty, frail, weak human version of whom I had just killed. Although I didn't understand what she was thinking, I was picking enough '_mierdas' _to know she was upset.

"What..." I started to ask, and all of the vampires snapped to attention. I suddenly felt very exposed. I swallowed; my mouth was dry.

"Who was he?" I continued.

The images in Maria's mind shifted, and she was picturing Jasper, but in this memory Jasper was hurt, somehow, in some way I couldn't understand.

"He was a gift for Jasper." Maria stepped forward. She had no real discernible accent, and it was disconcerting to hear her mental voice in Spanish running in parallel to the English she was speaking out loud.

"A gift?" In my peripheral vision I could see the others shifting back and forth, looking at me, calculating which limb they were going to grab. I could tell that for most of them this wasn't the first time they had ambushed someone.

I took a step back, but then realized that would draw them closer to Bella. I leaned a bit to the right, trying to calculate how far I was to the back door, past the collapsed concrete pillar.

"Hmm, yes, you must know about Jasper's gift. It's very powerful. But, you see, it can also be very damaging. Some feelings he can't keep out, if they are strong enough. It caused us a lot of trouble in the first few battles, the rage, the anger that he couldn't help but absorb. If it was too much for him, it completely overwhelmed him, and he would project it onto all of us." Maria took another step closer as she spoke.

She was light on her feet, even for a vampire, and I felt like a wild animal that she was trying not to startle.

I shifted a little more to the right, and I wondered how many steps it would take to clear the wooden pallets on the ground between the collapsed concrete and the door.

"Overwhelm him?" I asked. I thought of all of the stupid action movies I had seen as a human, how the hero always tried to keep the villain talking while they planned their escape.

"Oh," I said out loud as what Maria said suddenly clicked in my mind. Her thoughts of the crazed man, why she had dragged him along with her to Seattle, and the memories of Jasper in pain. "He would have driven Jasper insane?"

Maria smiled again. She didn't answer me out loud, but her memories of Jasper intensified. They were dark, disturbed, terrifying.

"But if that..." I looked at the corpse of the vampire to my left. "If Jasper... but... wouldn't that have been projected onto all of us? Wouldn't it have destroyed everyone?" I said, and I tried another small step to the right.

The six vampires were also moving slightly, shifting to the left, staying in formation, rotating slowly around. It made me think of the little dance Bella and I had done only twenty minutes ago, before I had... I couldn't think about that right now.

I looked quickly over at Bella, still unmoving on the trunk of the car, then back at Maria. I didn't want to leave her here. But I was a coward; I was afraid. I didn't want to die. I took another step to closer towards the direction of the door, away from the car.

Maria spoke again. "I'll admit, Jasper always was a better fighter than me. And with that little mind-reading bitch of his? But I always knew how to fight dirty. And it would be worth it to see him suffer."

Maria was thinking now of the one time she had run into Jasper and Alice, soon after they had joined the Cullens. Was this all that it was? Jealousy? I shook my head in disbelief. It was just too cliché. I would die, here in this shitty parking deck, because of some fucked up love triangle?

"I..." I didn't know what to say. I looked over again at Bella.

I didn't know why I was trying to buy time; I didn't know what I thought was going to happen. Maybe my time was up months ago, when Jasper got to me in the M.E.'s office. Were these last few months as a vampire only borrowed time, some surreal purgatory?

I thought of a book I'd read over the summer, where the entire plot of the novel (some metaphor-heavy, sex-crazed trip through Eastern Europe) was really just the dying thoughts during the last few minutes of the protagonist's life, after he'd been hit by a car in the first chapter.

There was nothing left to wait for.

I turned and started to sprint to the door. I felt like I was moving through Jell-o, like I was in some weird, dream-like state where I couldn't move as fast as I wanted to.  
I cleared the crumbed concrete pillar, but I would need another few steps to get over the wooden pallets.

As my left foot hit the ground, I could see in the minds of the other vampires that Maria was only inches behind me. I could feel the air shift and move around me, and my heart sank as I realized that I couldn't move fast enough.

Maria's cold hand grabbed my right ankle, and she threw me back towards the others. I couldn't focus on where I was as I flew through the air, not with the vision of my body in the minds of all of the vampires surrounding me—it was too much. I couldn't process it fast enough, and I hit the floor face first.

I was confused; I didn't think that the impact would hurt as much as it did, and the pain seemed to be in the wrong place. I couldn't process the thoughts of the vampires around me; I couldn't concentrate. I didn't know where everyone was, and I didn't understand what was going on. The pain was in my left shoulder, but I hadn't landed on my side, I'd thought.

The pain suddenly was searing, bright hot white that was blinding and overwhelming, and I couldn't think about anything else. There was a noise, a horrific metallic screeching noise, and I was screaming.

I realized then that my left arm was gone, ripped from my body. I looked up to my left at the stocky newborn vampire, one of the ones whose thoughts were in Spanish, and he was holding my arm, clear venom dripping on the ground, and I could see the exposed, rounded head of my left humerus. There was pressure on my back, I realized now, that I hadn't felt a second ago.

I was being held down, someone pulling on my other arm. I twisted and tried to get the weight off of my back, but I couldn't get enough traction to move. The pain was too much, and for the first time since waking up as a vampire my mind was sluggish, slow and weird. I smelled something. Smoke, maybe? The air seemed warmer, and I wondered how or why someone could start a fire in a concrete parking deck.

_Edward, Edward!_

I could hear someone calling my name in their mind. I wondered for a minute if it was my mom. I knew that didn't make sense, and I stopped thinking when the pressure on my right arm increased. Then I was moving again, and there was chaos in the minds of everyone around me. It was so confusing, and I was being dragged, but away from the heat, and there was just too much _noise_.

"Shhhh... be quiet," I mumbled, closing my eyes as my face dragged along the cement floor. It was too noisy, and my shoulder where my arm had been ripped away hurt too much for me to try to listen to everyone. There was shouting now, mentally and out loud.

"It's okay, it's okay, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, Edward. I had to wait; I'm so sorry..." There was a sweet voice in my ear, a girl's voice, Alice?

"Alice?"

"Edward, I'm so sorry." Alice reached down and grabbed me around the waist, pulling me up so my back was flush against her chest. She continued to walk backwards, and I tried to walk with her, but I kept stumbling. The loss of my arm was so overwhelming that I couldn't keep my balance, and the pain wasn't subsiding. I couldn't focus my thoughts.

"My arm..."

"Esme!" Alice shouted. I looked up and saw that the entire parking deck was now full of smoke. I could still make out the scene in front of me, but with the particulate floating in the air, it was like trying to make out shapes in one of those 3D posters in the mall when I was a kid. I saw movement, lots of movement, and realized that there were now twice as many vampires as before.

I could make out Emmett's hulking figure, and squinting, I saw he was holding someone to his chest, much like Alice was holding me. Rosalie was in front of him, leaning in, and then I heard that horrible metallic screeching again. Rosalie turned and threw something behind her. It was a head, I realized. I thought that maybe this should upset me, but I didn't feel anything, except the pain in my side. Following the arc of the disembodied head, black hair streaming behind it like a comet tail, I now saw the source of the smoke: someone had lit the wooden pallets on fire. The head landed in the center of the burning slats, and the flames sparked and hissed.

"We can't get out the back door now," I said. I still felt like I was processing everything about a minute too slow. The pain was getting worse.

"It hurts, Alice. I thought it couldn't hurt this bad."

"I know, I know." Alice tightened her grip around my chest as she continued to walk backwards. She stopped after another fifteen feet, and shifted me in her arms as she sat down. She looked at my shoulder, where my arm should have been, and I could see it in her mind.

"Oh, shit."

I whimpered as she spoke, watching through her mind the jagged flesh outlining my shoulder tightening, and the cavernous hole under my clavicle, where the head of my humerus should insert, puckering slowly, like some high-speed nature documentary.

"Alice..." I started to panic, and tried to reach around with my other hand.

"Stop." Alice grabbed my hand in hers. "You'll only cut yourself. We need your arm."

"ESME!" she yelled again, and I followed her mind's eye as she looked up from my shoulder. If I couldn't keep up with the the fight before, there was no way I could follow what was happening in Alice's mind. The scene looked fuzzy, out of focus, and I realized she was not only watching the fight in real time, but in the future as well, each small increment of the future superimposed over the current moment. I closed my eyes; it was too much to take in.

Less than a minute later I heard movement directly in front of us, and felt the air shift. I smelled Esme's sweet scent, almost indiscernible underneath the reeking smell of venom and smoke in the air. I opened my eyes and saw her crouching in front of me, holding my arm.

"I'm so sorry, sweetie. I think you're missing a finger." I looked at my left hand dangling in front of me, four fingers twitching.

"It's moving," I said.

"That's a good sign, I think," Esme said. I looked up at her. Her neck was glistening with venom, and her t-shirt was torn. I reached up with my right hand and brushed it against her shoulder. We both winced, and I looked down at my fingers as I pulled them away from her jagged, torn skin. They were sliced open, the clear flesh identical to the epidermis, but moist and slightly smoother, like the inside of a gummi bear.

Alice shifted her arms, and then the pain was searing and sharp again, blurring the edges of my vision. I screamed again and pushed back, kicking, trying to dislodge Alice from my back. I could feel her fingers digging into the flesh of my shoulder.

"Stop it! Stop it, stop, stop, stop...." I was begging her. I didn't understand why she was doing this. I reached up with my injured right hand and grabbed her arm, trying to pull it away. Esme shifted in front of me and leaned forward, pressing her knees against my legs, straightening them out and holding them down. With her free hand she pried my fingers from Alice's arm, and laced our hands together.

"Edward. Edward, look at me." I pulled my eyes up and met her gaze. Her normally soft features were strained and distorted.

"Alice has to open up the wound again—it was starting to close. We need to try to fit your arm back in so it can knit itself together. Hold still." Esme was still holding my hand, forcing my good arm down to my side.

As she continued to hold my gaze, out of my peripheral vision I saw her give my left arm to Alice. And then the pain was unlike anything I had felt before, like a white-hot poker being shoved into my arm, burning liquid glass pouring into the hole in my shoulder, and I helplessly tried to move away. Both Alice and Esme were holding me tight, keeping my left arm flush against my side. Esme's mind was full of pain and confusion, and she kept thinking _hold on hold on_, and I realized that I was biting her shoulder as she leaned against me. I gingerly loosened my jaw, and carefully pulled back. The pain shifted just a little bit, cooling by the slightest degree.

"It's starting to hold, Esme." Alice said behind me. "I've..." I could see her looking around, feel her shifting behind me as she looked around me and Esme.

"I've got to help Jasper..." her voice drifted off, and in her mind I could tell she was starting to play out dozens of different scenarios, shrouded by the thick smoke in the parking deck. Esme was moving me as Alice flitted away, and she propped my bad shoulder up against something cool and metallic.

"Don't move, all right? You've got to keep pressure on your arm for it to heal properly." She was now looking around, too, and I could see in her mind her picturing where she had left Carlisle ten minutes ago; he had been ripping the head off of the stout newborn that had been holding my arm.

"I'm going to go help the others, okay?"

"Wait..." I took a deep breath. The pain was still cooling, degree by degree, and my mind was starting to clear. "What did Alice mean by 'I had to wait'? She said, earlier..."

Esme smiled sadly at me, and I could hear play out in her mind the conversation between Alice and the rest of the Cullens during their drive into the city minutes earlier.

"Alice was under a lot of pressure. She had to protect Jasper; you have to understand that, sweetie. He couldn't have survived Miguel, the one you killed. It was the only way we had a chance of surviving this. If he had been exposed to Miguel's mind, it would have driven us all mad."

"But.. wait... how long did she...?"

I couldn't wrap my mind around all of this. Alice had known I would find Ben and Ange in the front yard? She knew I would go off on my own?

"How long has she known? When did she start planning this?"

"Honey, that's why she had Jasper turn you. With your mind reading and newborn strength, getting here first, was the only way we would have had a chance. I'm so sorry."

Esme leaned in and kissed my forehead, and then she was gone, back off into the dense smoke.

I sat there, leaning against the cool metal, stunned. Alice had known. My entire existence over the past six weeks was premeditated, planned out, I was just a pawn for Alice to use against Maria. I thought about our conversation a month ago, on the front porch, when I asked her if it was all a big chess game. I guessed it was.

I leaned my head against the metal, and I realized that it wasn't really metal, but dense, cool plastic. I was leaning against Bella's bumper. I tilted my head up and could see the outline of her elbow slightly extended over the edge of the trunk. I held my breath, and for a moment I thought I heard something faint, like the thrumming of a heartbeat, but fast like some small little mammal.

I tried to reach up with my good arm, towards Bella, but that shifted my left shoulder too much, so I just held still. The smoke was getting thicker, and it was harder and harder to make out what was happening with the others. After a few more moments things began to quiet, and I could barely make out any movement through the smoke.

Then I heard someone approach. The thoughts were blurred and fast, and I realized that they were in Spanish. I quickly reached around with my good arm, and tried to hold my left in place against my shoulder as I pushed my feet against the ground, trying to stand up, pushing myself against the body of the car. Maria was limping as she approached me, and I could see that a large chunk of her right thigh was gone.

She kept looking back toward the fire, trying to squint through the haze. It was still difficult to really make out anything from even a dozen yards away. I couldn't see any movement at all anymore. I wondered who was left. Maria looked resigned as she approached, like I was another chore to take care of. I could now see Bella in front of me, to my left. It almost looked like she was moving, like her hands were clenching.

Maria followed my gaze to Bella's body. In her mind she pictured Bella walking through a parking lot at night. I had been right, I realized, in coming here. She had been following Bella. But I hadn't been able to save her.

"I'm sorry," I said out loud, to Bella, to no one.

Maria looked back at me. She was now only a few feet away, and I could see that she had other injuries, other missing chunks of flesh. I wondered if they were from Jasper.

Then she moved very quickly, almost too fast for me to follow, and she was flush against me. She was gripping my head with her hands, and I tried to pull her away with my one good hand. She was too strong, and I was still in too much pain to be able to move any faster. She leaned her head down, and I felt her mouth against my neck. It reminded me of Jasper in the M.E.'s office.

I tried to shift back, but I couldn't move. She was pressing me against the body of the car, the force of her body against mine denting the frame. Then I felt her bite down, ripping through muscle and tendons, and I tried to kick her, but I couldn't get enough traction, as she was lifting me slightly off the ground. I tried to dig my fingers into her face, attempting to reach her eyes, anything to pull her away.

The pain brightened and burned, and I looked over the top of her head at Bella, her long brown hair matted and stained with her own blood. I closed my eyes. Then the pain shifted, and I felt the flesh ripping away from my neck. I winced, bracing myself for her to bite down again, but then the pressure lifted, and something was moving.

I opened my eyes. I could still feel Maria's hands twisted in my hair, but her head was gone.

Standing behind her was Jasper, and he was holding her head in his hands. He had a long strip of flesh missing from his face, from his temple down over part of his left eye, and a small piece of his eyelid missing, making his face even more ghoulish and terrifying in the dark smoke. He turned, and threw the head towards the flickering blurred flames, barely visible in the distance.

"It's done," he said as he turned back towards me. "She was the last one. Are you okay?"

He reached up and started to peel Maria's fingers off my head. I felt him pull her body away from mine and saw him turn back to the smoke, dragging Maria's body behind him, towards the flames. I reached up to my neck, cutting my fingers open again when I ran them against the rough open wound on my neck.

When I tried to straighten up, I realized that my left arm was now sticking properly in my shoulder. I still couldn't feel it, really, but it was fused enough now that I could stop pressing my side against the car. I tried to take a step away and almost fell. I stopped for a moment, trying to regain my balance.

I looked around but couldn't see anything now but the billowing black smoke in front of me, millions of microscopic particles suspended in the air, millimeters from my eyes. It was difficult even to make out the Bella next to me.

I turned and reached down with my right hand until I could feel the hood of the trunk. I slid myself along the length of the car until I reached the bumper, blindly reaching around until I could feel Bella's soft body. I awkwardly grabbed her with my one good hand until I was gripping her under her armpit, and dragged her body towards me. But with one hand I didn't have a good grip, and I dropped her off the edge of the car.

"Shit!"

Then I felt a pair of hands wrap around my waist. I tried to pull away, but then I heard Jasper's voice in my mind.

_It's okay, Edward; it's okay now. _He started to walk me forward, around the car.

"Bella!" I tried to turn back.

"I've got her, Edward." I could hear Alice's voice faintly behind us.

Jasper kept pushing me forward; ten feet, twenty feet, then we were moving up, and I realized we were walking up the ramp. The cool air hit our faces, and I could see again, the smoke dissipating out into the cool November night.

"Bella," I said again, and I turned my head around, looking over Jasper's shoulder. I saw Alice appear from the smoke behind us, cradling Bella's limp and bloody body against her own.

"Come on, Edward, we need to leave." Jasper pushed me forward again.

As we walked away into the dark I could hear the sound of sirens approaching, and I wondered what the firefighters would make of the sickly sweet smoke and the burnt corpses we had left behind.

[1]wikipedia[.]org/wiki/Cannon-Bard_theory

**Author's Note:**

**I apologize for the long wait for this chapter! I had to finish my dissertation, and then I needed a few weeks of recovery time; my brain was completely fried. **

**Big thanks as always to Feisty, beta extraordinaire! **

**AND, this is the last 'real' chapter, I've got an epilogue planned and that's all, folks!**

**Thanks to everyone for reading and reviewing!  
**


End file.
